Tomato Soup & Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

Cindy had bought a loaf of jalapeno cheddar bread at the Greenback Farmers Market this week and Bev decided she wanted to use it for grilled cheese sandwiches to go with the homemade tomato soup she wanted to make.  I’d tried a couple of soup recipes from the web and they all contained significant chicken broth which left the soup tasting like tomato flavored chicken broth to me – no offense intended for those of you who make it this way. 

So I went in search of a recipe without the broth and found one from The Pioneer Woman that looked like what I was looking for.  Her recipe uses both tomatoes and juice and makes a big batch so I scaled it back for the 28 oz can of tomatoes we wanted to use to get the one below – click on the link to check out her site for the original recipe and a video.

Homemade Tomato Soup – Adapted from the Pioneer Woman

Ingredients:

1/3 medium sweet onion

2 tablespoons butter

Two 14.5-ounce cans diced tomatoes

1 T. sugar (more or less to taste) (Bev addded 1t.)

 2 t. chicken base

1/3 c. sherry, optional (we added it to individual bowls)

1/2 c. heavy cream

½ t. dried basil

S&P to taste

1/8 c. chopped flat-leaf parsley, scant

Directions:

1.To begin, dice the onion. Melt the butter in a saucepan, throw in the onion and cook until translucent.

2.Now dump in the diced tomatoes, chicken base, basil and stir to combine, bring to a boil then simmer until tomatoes are cooked.

3.Use an immersion blender to puree the tomatoes.

4.Add S&P to taste.

5.Add the sherry if desired. Stir in the cream and parsley and add some water if too thick.

6.Taste and adjust seasonings one last time. 

I thought the soup was very good and I added a little sherry to mine which sweetened it a little.

For the sandwiches, I just sliced the bread and topped with the requested cheese – cheddar for Cindy, pimento and hot pepper for Bev and pimento for me.  I grilled them in a lid covered skillet and lettuce and tomato were available as add-ons – mine was just the cheese.

This made for a fine late lunch and I would definitely use this soup recipe again but I would never dunk my sandwich in the soup ala the current Cambell's Soup commercial 😊

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them and the blue words are links.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

3/14/20 meal date