Creamy Tomato Soup

Bored of Heinz? Make your own

Creamy Tomato Soup

45 Minutes

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 3tbsp olive oil
• 1 medium onion, peeled and finely chopped
• 1 medium carrot, peeled and finely chopped
• 1-2 sticks of celery trimmed and sliced
• 1 clove of garlic, peeled and crushed
• 1 medium red pepper, deseeded and chopped
• 1 heaped tbsp tomato paste
• 25g brown rice
• 850ml vegetable stock
• Freshly ground black pepper

Recipe

Heat the oil in a large lidded casserole dish or saucepan. Tip in the chopped onion, carrot and celery, stir well, cover and cook gently for about ten minutes.

Add the garlic and pepper and stir. Cover and cook for a further 5-6 minutes. Mix in the tomato paste, let it cook for a minute, then add the brown rice and stock. Bring to the boil, stir, then simmer with the pan half-covered for 25-30 minutes until the vegetables are soft and the rice thoroughly cooked.

Blend the soup in a good processor until smooth (you may need to do this in a couple of batches). Return to the pan and reheat, adding a good grind of pepper to taste.

Taken from – The Guardian Student Cookbook by Fiona Beckett

Review

Tomato soup, one of those great meals when it’s cold outside and you’ve just come in. Now of course most of us don’t bother with making our own soup, and why should we? If you don’t like the big favourite Heinz, well there are plenty of other options to choose from when it takes a quarter of the time it takes to make this.

Before making this of course as a student its pretty hard to get 4 people together when it isn’t the weekend due to university. But managed i did, so i sat down my flat and let them try my freshly made creamy tomato soup.

If I don’t say so myself it was a pretty good soup, even my flat mates said so. However when they asked me how long it took me to make this soup, and I told them 45 minutes, they pretty much all asked why wouldn’t you just make it out of the tin.

And that is my verdict for this dish, it taste great but it’s not really worth the extra time or money to prepare when you can get pretty satisfactory soup straight out the tin.

By Matthew Hancocks