Ina Garten's Clever 2-Style Method For Crafting The Greatest Tomato Soup

Though canned tomato soup is quick to plop into a pot and heat up, a bowl of the best homemade tomato soup is a simple joy that can't easily be beat. Still, leave it to the entertaining extraordinaire Ina Garten to spruce up her own tomato soup recipes with heavy cream and saffron. But if you can't get your hands on these ingredients, Garten provides an easier way to build depth and add flavor to your meal, no special order required.

When mixing up items, Garten's roasted tomato basil soup recipe from "The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook" includes both ripe plum tomatoes and plum tomatoes taken out of a can. While she stirs the canned tomatoes with butter, seasonings, browned onions, and chicken stock, tomatoes dressed in olive oil, salt, and pepper roast in the oven. Once these roasted tomatoes are added to the soupy mixture, the assembly gets acquainted for the better part of an hour, plenty of time for the basil, thyme, and red chili flakes to reach prime potential. Before serving her creation, Garten pours this soup into a food mill to make even smoother spoonfuls to serve.

Garten's technique of doubling up on produce is a simple strategy that can be applied to many soup recipes. Though using canned tomatoes may be convenient when trying to put a quick meal on the table, that extra step of adding roasted tomatoes to your stockpot can yield noticeable results. This is especially true once your finished recipe is ladled into a bowl and ready to serve. Taking a page from our own roasted tomato soup recipe, even a simple recipe like our cozy 3-ingredient tomato soup can be enhanced by including additional roasted, smoky vegetables into the lineup of ingredients.

Beyond just tomato soup, consider using a similar tactic for other vegetables you're inclined to reach for straight out of the can. Pairing canned and fresh ingredients like peas, carrots, corn, and beans can not only bulk up a soup recipe but also add fresh flavor to your meals with only a bit of extra effort. Alternatively, should you not have the time to create a soup recipe from scratch, add a few seasonal vegetables to the soup you dump out of a can for a convenient upgrade that requires little culinary prowess.