Roasted Tomato Basil Soup – Perfect for Freezing

This month’s Recipe Redux theme is a great one!

Fantastic Freezer Meals:

Share your tips and tricks for making one – or more freezer meals. It’s the end of the gardening season for some of us; let’s store away that produce in heat-and-eat-from-the-freezer-meals. Show how convenient healthy freezer breakfast, lunches or dinners can be!

I would love to have a stocked freezer with easy to grab meals. I have had such good intentions of doing those make 10 freezer meals in a day programs that you see on Pinterest but it just hasn’t happened yet.  However, I am pretty good about freezing soup. So that is what I thought I would share today, an easy soup recipe that freezes well. What really happens is we usually make way toooo much soup for two people to eat so I always throw some in the freezer. It comes in really handy for lunches or quick dinners.  A space saving way to freeze soups is in quart size freezer bags.  When first placing in freezer, just make sure bag is on a flat surface.

We decided to invest in a chest freezer a few years ago since our fridge freezer doesn’t have a ton of room.  I like having a big freezer but I could never remember what was in it so I decided to get a small whiteboard and keep track of what gets frozen and what gets used.  It’s been pretty helpful so far.

 

Our garden is still producing a tomato here and there but I think this is the last big batch of tomatoes we are going to get for the season.   It’s going to be such a nice treat this winter to pull out a soup made with fresh tomatoes.   I followed Ina Garten’s Roasted Tomato Basil Soup recipe since she can do no wrong, I have always had success with her recipes.  Have you tried her lemon curd recipe?  Holy cow, it’s good.

Anyways, back to the soup I think the key is roasting the tomatoes first. It brings out all the natural sweetness. Using a food mill to remove some of the seeds and skins also gives it a nice smooth texture. I didn’t strain everything out because I like chunkier soups but you could easily strain it completely. I’ve heard that blending tomato seeds can make soups or sauces bitter so I didn’t use my immersion blender like I do with most soups.

This soup is perfect with a grilled cheese.  There isn’t a combination that is better than tomato soup and grilled cheese, is there?

Roasted Tomato Basil Soup

Slightly modified from the Food Network recipe courtesy of Ina Garten

Ingredients

20-22 (about 3 pounds) ripe plum tomatoes, cut in half lengthwise

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons olive oil 

1 tablespoon kosher salt

1 1/2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper

2 cups chopped yellow onions (2 onions)

6 garlic cloves, minced

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

2 cans diced tomatoes

2 cups fresh basil leaves, packed

3 sprigs fresh rosemary, leaves removed and finely chopped

1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

1 quart stock (chicken or vegetable) water