Recipe: Tomato Soup

Banana Legs is a nice paste tomato.

I'm in the midst of tomato season at my house. It's been a very good, prolific year, which is a nice change because the last few years have not had the best yields. (Perhaps this year's dry growing season is the reason.)

Nevertheless, I'm trying to use up tomatoes in ways besides making sauce. (Last year I made a big batch of tomato sauce and froze it, but it got buried in the freezer and forgotten about. I haven't mastered canning, with the main hurdle being my ceramic cooktop stove.)

So I am trying to find other creative ways to use up my tomato harvest, besides the obvious tomatoes with mozzarella and bacon lettuce and tomato sandwiches.

This year, after growing Banana Legs tomatoes for the first time, I decided to make yellow tomato soup!

Here is the recipe I use. It is enough for one large serving of tomato soup. If you need to feed more people, double the recipe.

4 cups of chopped tomatoes

1 medium white onion, cut in half (save the half that won't be used for something else)

3 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped up into small pieces.

2 cups of chicken broth (you can use vegetable broth as a substitute)

2 tbsp butter

2 tbsp all purpose flour

salt, to taste

1 tsp sugar (not needed with yellow paste tomatoes since they are sweeter to begin with)

First, slice up your tomatoes.

Add the chopped onion and garlic.

Add the chicken broth. Bring to a boil. Boil gently for 20 minutes.

It should look like the above photo after 20 minutes. Remove from heat and run the mixture through a strainer. (I don't mind if some pieces of onion or garlic get through, or tomato seeds.)

In a small saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Stir in the flour to make a roux, until medium brown. Gradually mix in a bit of the strained tomatoes. Make sure there are no lumps. Add another small addition of the strained tomatoes. Then add this roux to the strained tomato soup. Stir well. Season with salt and sugar to taste.