tomato soup

Found a new recipe, Tomato Bisque Soup. I may never buy tomato soup again. It was simple and very tasty. Hubby wanted tomato soup and grill cheese sandwiches for supper last night. I didn't have any cans in the pantry, so the Internet came to the rescue, again. I found this recipe on cooks.com.

TOMATO BISQUE SOUP

2 (1 lb.) cans tomatoes 1/2 c. onions, chopped 1 tbsp. sugar 2 tsp. salt 1/4 tsp. pepper 1/2 tsp. cloves or allspice 1/4 c. butter 1/4 c. flour 1 qt. milk In medium pan, simmer tomatoes, onions, salt, pepper, cloves, or allspice, and sugar for 10 minutes until paste. Melt butter in large pan and whisk in flour; add milk. Simmer until hot and thick. Add hot tomato mixture to hot milk mixture. Serve hot.

This is what I did with it.

1 28 oz can of tomato sauce
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped celery
1 tsp. Lawry's seasoned salt
1/8 tsp. garlic powder
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup flour
1 quart milk

Saute onion and celery in butter until onions are translucent. Add flour, salt, and garlic; cook the roux until the flour is golden brown. Stir constantly to keep the flour from burning. (If you scorch your flour just start over cause it tastes really, really bad!) Stir in 2 cups of milk with a whisk; keep stirring and cook until thickened. Then add the last 2 cups of milk and whisk until thick and bubbling again. Take off the stove and whisk in the tomato sauce and serve.

We added the fresh ground pepper at the table after we had our bowls filled. As each of us likes different amounts of pepper. I wasn't sure about the cloves or allspice. I don't like a lot of cloves in my food. I think cloves are over used in most recipes. I did get out the allspice and sprinkled a little bit on a small spot of my bowl of soup and it was 'Okay' but I didn't think it did that much for flavor of the soup. Hubby was just as happy with the soup without the allspice, also.

As we were having dinner we talked about different things to do to the soup. Like adding curry powder or garam masala, or Italian herbs to change up the flavor a little. So next time I am going to replace the butter with olive oil and add 1/2 teaspoon of Italian herb blend and see what that will taste like. Hubby wondered about V-8 juice but I would think you would have to cook it down to a sauce consistency before adding it to the white sauce.

One other thing I notice as I was typing. The original recipe calls for some sugar and I didn't add any so next time I may add a little stevia and see what that does to the flavor. But I also wonder if the added sugar is the reason they had to add two teaspoons of salt to the soup to take it from a sweet soup back to a savory one.

Have a good day!

Judy