This winter has been intense and never-ending, so I decided to delve into the realm of homemade soups to cope. I've never been one for making soup, since I've always been under the impression that soups are too involved and you end up with way more than you can possibly eat before it goes bad or you get tired of eating the same thing at every meal. But over the past few months, I've learned that this is definitely not the case. I started simple, and as a result I discovered that soup can be very very simple. Soup can be as involved and as complex as you want it to be. And the nice thing is that you can make a complex tasting soup out of a simple recipe. I decided that a basic tomato soup was the best way to illustrate this.
One of the easiest ways to add complexity of flavor to a simple soup is by using a homemade vegetable stock. I had never made my own stock before, but I got encouraged by watching Julia Child videos on youtube during those long 10 degree (or less) days in January. Making stock is incredibly simple and completely affordable (read: almost free), and once you know how simple it is, you will never go back to store bought. Simply save all of your vegetable scraps and cuttings (cleaned, of course) as you prepare dinner, throw them in a gallon bag, and store them in the freezer. Once your bag gets full, throw it all in a giant pot with anything extra you want to add (I like to add a portobello mushroom for umami), add water, bring it to a simmer for about 30 minutes to an hour, strain it through cheesecloth, and blamo! Homemade vegetable broth. Stick it in the freezer and you have it when you need it.
The quality of ingredients also makes a huge difference in the flavor of your soup. Something that I found to be frustrating when looking for a tomato soup recipe to use as a jumping off point was that recipes using fresh tomatoes as opposed to canned tomatoes are so few and far between. After reading all the bad things about cans leaching chemicals into canned tomatoes as a result of their acid content, I try to stay away from canned tomatoes as much as possible these days (But sometimes it's pretty unavoidable, especially in the dead of winter). But imagine making this in the summer with fresh heirloom tomatoes and serving it chilled! Fresh tomatoes bring so much more flavor to the table than canned tomatoes, and you run less of a risk of your soup tasting like a tomato pasta sauce. Yuck.
Another way I've found to add that little extra something to a simple soup recipe is to give some of the ingredients special treatment. In the case of this tomato soup, I've decided that ingredient will be roasted garlic. Sure it adds some time into the equation, but roasted garlic is always worth the extra time.
Basic Instructions for Roasting Garlic
Before you roast your garlic, remove all of the excess outer skins from the garlic head. You don't want this stuff in your delicious food.
Next, you want to slice the end off of the garlic head to reveal the inner cloves. You want to make sure you use a good sharp knife for this.
After you slice off the tops of the cloves, place your garlic in a tinfoil nest with extra virgin olive oil coating all exposed surfaces. Some people have a fancy garlic roaster and that's just fine, but tin foil works just as well.
Secure the foil so that you don't have any leaks, and place the garlic in a preheated 350 degree oven. I used the toaster oven for this since I was just doing the one head of garlic.
Check the garlic after about 30 minutes. Roasting the garlic can take anywhere from 30-45 minutes, depending on your oven.
Be careful not to burn your garlic like I did! Burned garlic is made for trashcans, so please ignore the burned bits.
Now your garlic is ready for your soup!
