Garden Fresh Tomato Basil Soup Recipe
There’s nothing like homemade tomato basil soup with grilled cheese sandwiches! Make that tomato basil soup with fresh tomatoes and basil from the garden, and it’s amazing!
Growing Tomatoes
This year, we have the best tomato crop I’ve ever had. We got our tomato plants from various locations – many of them came from our local high school’s FFA greenhouse sale. We grew stripey, low acid golds, Roma, beefsteak, heirloom Cherokee tomatoes, and other varieties. Heritage High FFA in Ringgold, Georgia always has great plants that bear well.
This year I put about ¼ cup of plain Epsom salts in each hole before transplanting the plants into the dirt. I’ve kept the weeds down by putting down cardboard and covering it with wood chip mulch.
We had some super-hot weather with hardly any rain for the month of June. Hot temperatures can keep tomatoes from turning red. We were out of town for two weeks during this 90–100-degree period. Dave set up a sprinkler system for the garden, and we had our son turn it on each day for 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening.
I’m thinking this is why our tomatoes might be doing so well… they had time to grow big before turning red. They didn’t get so much water that they got water rot. The Epsom salts are also supposed to help with water rot. So, we’ve had none of that this season.
We also put bird netting over the tomato plants to keep the birds off them. Last year, got their bites out of most of what we grew.
I had so many tomatoes yesterday, I decided to make some homemade tomato basil soup. Here’s my recipe:
Garden Tomato Basil Soup Recipe
- 2 Vidalia onions or yellow onions chopped
- 4 TBSP butter
- 3 cloves garlic diced
- Fresh Tomatoes – 7 cups finely chopped in food processor
- ¼ cup fresh basil
- 1 TBSP Sugar or sweetener
- ½ tsp salt
- ½ tsp ground pepper
- ½ to 1 cup heavy whipping cream
- 1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese
Instructions
Dice two Vidalia onions and put them in a non-reactive pot with 4 TBSP butter. Sauté the onions for 10 minutes. Then add the 3 cloves of garlic and sauté for another 3-4 minutes. Use a lower heat so you don’t burn them.
While your onions are cooking, clean and cut tomatoes into quarters and put them in a food processor. Dice them and measure until you have about 7 cups of diced tomatoes. While you’re dicing, toss in your basil so it gets chopped too.
Put the diced tomato/basil into your pot with the cooked onion/garlic. Add the sugar, salt, and pepper and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and cover with a lid and cook for about 10 minutes.
Carefully put portions of the cooked mixture into a Vitamix or blender and blend until smooth. Be careful with these hot ingredients. Start your Vitamix or blender on a very slow speed and gradually increase the speed so it doesn’t splash up and burn you.
You could also use an immersion blender to blend the tomato mixture till smooth. Keep blending portions at a time until you have all the ingredients blended smoothly. You’ll probably need another bowl to put the well-blended soup into as you’re blending it a bit at a time.
Once all the soup is blended smooth, put it back in your big pot and add the whipping cream and parmesan cheese and heat to a slight boil.
Serve warm with bread or crackers or grilled cheese sandwiches.
Makes about 8 cups of soup.
