Tiny Korean Cooking: Creamy Tomato Soup – with chunks!

The other day, Chris was Very Sick – yes, I capitalized that – and upon my inquiry if he wanted soup, asked me for tomato soup. I always thought chicken soup was the sick-person-comfort-food in America, but personally I prefer tomato over chicken, so his request suited me fine! :D I opted for a creamy tomato soup with a mild flavor, which would be gentle on his tummy! The fact that this soup had chunks while at the same time being creamy, was just a bonus. For his tummy.

I have a thing for the word “tummy.”

It also wasn’t a bonus – I just don’t have a food processor to… well, you’ll see.

This is what you need:
1 15-oz can of crushed tomatoes
Chicken broth
Onion
Garlic
Red wine vinegar
Heavy cream
Salt/pepper
Dried or fresh basil

Start by chopping some onion. How much, depends on how you like your soup. My guy likes it when onions help flavor things, but he’d rather now chew chunks that make him go “oh, that’s a piece of onion!” So I chopped up about 1/4th cups worth, and made sure to chop them really finely. This relates to the whole “chunks” issue.

Next up; garlic. You can skip the garlic, but I advise against it – garlic is too awesome to be left out! I chopped up one clove – then one more clove, because garlic helps when you’re sick. Trufax. Though one clove is usually more than enough.

Now add a good amount of olive oil (or butter, if you’re not a Tiny Korean doing WeightWatchers) to a pot. I say “a good amount” because I eyeball it, though in reality I’m guessing it was about 2-3 tablespoons. Let it get nice and toasty warm, then add the onion – you want them translucent, not brown.

Add the garlic a little bit after the onion, because the garlic will burn a lot more easily than the onion will, and you don’t want to see brown in there!

Then comes the crushed tomatoes. Mix it all up real well, and let it begin to bubble gently.

Add 1 cup of chicken broth. Since I didn’t want this soup to have too much flavor (on account on sick boyfriend’s tummy), I replaced 1/2 of it with water, but normally I really really recommend doing the full cup of broth!

1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar. It may not seem like a lot, but that red wine vinegar can add a lot more flavor than you think if you’re not sparse with it. I once added way too much and had to throw out everything, because the soup ended up tasting so bitter and vinegar-y and disgusting! :(

1 teaspoon of dried basil. Ideally, I’d be using fresh basil, but for some reason me and fresh herbs don’t mix well. If I buy those plants they have at the grocery store, they tend to die on me a lot, and if I buy the vacuum sealed, tiny packs of small leaves, they somehow still manage to grow moldy in like five minutes! But that’s okay – dried spices work well for me. I wish I had a place to grow chives, though! Dried chives are just not the same thing at all.

Anyway!

Hold on to your saddlebags! Granted, it’s not a lot, but adding 1/3 of a cup’s worth of heavy cream still makes the unhealthy bits of me sing in delight! If you really want, you can use half-and-half or something instead, but honestly? Don’t. Please, please don’t. I’ve been really good about sticking to my diet (I even – somewhat unintentionally – kept losing weight over Christmas!), but not even I can bring myself to taint this delicious soup by using something else than heavy cream!

Stir the soup well, and let it simmer – not boil! – for 15-20 mins.

Look at that color, yum! If the soup gets too thick, add some more chicken broth until it gets as thick or thin as you like it!

Now here’s why my creamy soup also has chunks – to get the soup really creamy, pour it into a separate container and use an immersion blender on it (or run it through any other sort of large-ish blender). But I don’t have a blender, of any kind. And when we moved me, Chris and I discovered that I have way too much stuff, and so I’m trying to not buy stuff unless I absolutely need it. Chunky soup will not kill me! So if you don’t have a blender, don’t fret.

If you do have one, make it creamy as all heck!

Season it with salt/pepper to your liking, taste it to see if it’s good enough, and if it is, well…

Bon apetit!

…or something.

Mmmm, soup and crackers!