Why You Shouldn't Experiment With Herbs And Spices In Your Tomato Soup

If you like to play with flavors and experiment in your kitchen, classic tomato soup is one of the recipes that can be really tempting as a test subject. Simple, quick to make, and costing basically nothing, it tastes wholesome and uncomplicated in its most basic form as a smooth, red soup base. Most home chefs at this point will feel emboldened to get creative by playing around with whatever herbs and spices they've got in the kitchen at the moment. Thing is, while we love encouraging creativity in the kitchen (it is, after all, one of the joys of cooking), tomato soup won't just accept anything and everything.

This is one of the most common mistakes that people make when making tomato soup: Mashing contrasting aromatics together to see how they play out. More often than not, it ends in a complete disaster. Let's say you decided to mash up dill and nutmeg. The combo makes sense next to one another — dill's fresh grassiness is a great contrast against the warm spiciness of nutmeg. While they're great as separate ingredients (or in a casserole dish of mashed potatoes), they likely won't make your tomato soup taste nice. Dill is fresh and herbaceous, while nutmeg is warm and spicy — both are pulling your senses in different directions, with none actually complementing the sweet-yet-tart flavor of the soup itself. The result is a confusing soup that tastes like it can't decide what it wants to be.

For seasoning tomato soup, our advice is this: Pick a direction or a style you'd like to nudge the soup toward, and stick to it. If you like your soup to be Italian-inspired or have a Mediterranean-ish flavor, herbs are going to be your best bet. Stir in a few teaspoons of basil or oregano (or both!). If you have a shaker of Italian seasoning, it's also going to be an excellent addition to the soup by giving it precisely the earthy and piney flavor that you're gunning for.

Needing your tomato soup to be a bit warmer? Cumin and coriander are good together in the pot. The former adds warmth, while the latter balances it out with a bright, citrusy sweetness — both contrast beautifully with one another, as well as the tomato soup base. And should you ever need hotness rather than just warmth to fend off cold days, you can make a spiced tomato soup from a combination of regular and smoked paprika. Both will bring pepperiness, but the smoked spice will throw an oak-fired smokiness on top for extra complexity. If you want even more spice in the soup, you can consider adding a touch of red chili flakes, too.

Last but not least, a dollop of cream is the simple ingredient Gordon Ramsay adds to tomato soup for the silkiest texture, and we recommend using basil, plus a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil for a slight grassiness. The sweet and peppery flavor, together with the herbaceousness of olive oil, can excellently complement the soup's natural richness and give you something that wouldn't be out of place at all in a fine-dining restaurant's soup course.