Valentine’s Day is approaching fast and there’s no better way to a person’s heart than a home-cooked meal, especially when that meal is heart healthy! This Tomato Soup is rich and flavorful, but easy enough for even novice chefs. It’s really just a sheet pan meal, blended up to perfection. You’ll be making this one on rotation once you’ve tried it!

What we also love about this lovely recipe is you don’t have to be too particular about your tomatoes. In fact, using up old, mushier tomatoes makes for a delicious soup. I know there are several grocery stores that have an “old” produce section where you can get a bunch of veggies marked down for an deep discount. Next time you see tomatoes, pick them up for this recipe!

There are three essential steps to this one: roasting some veggies, sauteeing some veggies, and blending. We start out with rough chopping our tomatoes and fennel and peeling our garlic and getting that into the oven. You’ll want to roast this in a deep dish like a pyrex so that the tomato juices don’t overflow. All of the juices are going to seep out of the tomatoes and coat the garlic so that it doesn’t burn, and then they will evaporate out for that sweet and roasted tomato flavor that gives this dish it’s signature taste.

While the tomatoes, fennel, and garlic are roasting, we’re going to rough chop a mirepoix of carrots, celery, and onion. If you’re not much of a chopping expert, then this is the recipe for you! Nothing has to be too particular since it will all be blended in the end anyhow. If you’re the type of person that uses your food processor or a slap chop to chop, feel free to use those as well.

We’re going to saute up our mirepoix with some veggie stock on the stove. We like using veggie stock when the end result is a soup or stew because it adds an extra oomph of flavor. To the mix goes our spices, and some fresh thyme. Feel free to use dried, but fresh herbs make this homemade soup all the better. I would experiment with fresh oregano or basil if you can’t find fresh thyme.

 

Once the tomatoes have evaporated most of their juices, we can add that to the pot and combine. At any point, you can blend this soup and put it back on the stove to keep warm. We also blended up a quick cashew cream to top this with. Balsamic glaze and fresh basil are excellent toppers too! We experimented with making adorable little hearts on top of our soup for serving but it took a bit of practice. Check out the video and the recipe below to see how we did! Until next time, xoxo Reebs

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Homemade Tomato Soup

A deliciously easy way to a person’s heart!

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Ingredients:

• ~10 roma tomatoes
• 1 fennel bulb
• 1 head of garlic, peeled
• 2 carrots, chopped
• 2 celery stalks, chopped
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 bunch of fresh thyme
• 2 bay leaves
• 3-4 cups veggie stock
• 1 15oz can tomato sauce
• 3 tablespoons smoked paprika
• 2 teaspoons WYW Date Powder

Instructions:

Preheat your oven to 450°F.

Chop the roma tomatoes in half and spread them around in a glass baking dish. Next chop the fennel bulb and add that to the dish along with the peeled garlic cloves. Roast this dish in the oven for about 35- 45 minutes or until the tomatoes show a little bit of char.

While that is roasting, sauté the carrots, celery, and onion in a large soup pot over medium high heat until tender, adding a bit of veggie stock to keep from sticking.

Next, throw everything together: add the contents of the roast pan to the soup pot along with the thyme, bay leaves, veggie stock, tomato sauce, paprika, and date powder. Bring this to a boil and reduce the heat and simmer for 5-10 minutes.

In batches, add the soup to the blender, blend until smooth, and add back to your soup pot. You can cook this for even longer if you like, to really bring out all those flavors, but it's done enough to eat! Garnish with basil and serve.