Homemade Roasted Tomato Soup

Baby it’s cold outside…

It’s that time of year. We’ve got cold mornings. We’ve got cold evenings. We even had snow flakes the other day.

But instead of complaining about the weather, I’ll just focus on the positive things that come with this seasonal change. Like delicious comfort food that warms right to the soul.

We’ve been working through the last of our bumper crop of tomatoes. You know, before they liquefy all over the kitchen and pantry floor. It’s like Bubba Gump in our house with tomatoes. Canned tomatoes. Stewed tomatoes. Tomato sauce. Tomato pesto. Fermented tomatoes. Sun-dried tomatoes.

You get the point.

So now I want to share with you our roasted tomato soup. Because tomatoes. And cold. And food.

Homemade Roasted Tomato Soup

This recipe will yield enough soup to produce about 9 pints in the pressure cooker. Or you can freeze it. We enjoyed it fresh (with grilled cheese sandwiches of course) and then canned the rest.

If you don’t want to make a large batch of soup, you can simply halve the ingredients to yield enough for a good sized family meal.

I love roasting tomatoes in the smoker. We smoked our tomatoes using mesquite, which gives the soup such a nice, sultry flavor, but if you prefer you can simply roast the tomatoes in the oven with a little olive oil.

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Ingredients

• 20 lbs tomatoes (we used amish paste and a variety of heirlooms)
• 3 medium onions
• 6 carrots
• 4 green bell peppers
• 6 slices of bacon, crumbled
• 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 2 tbs paprika
• 2 tbs fresh minced garlic
• 2 tsp sea salt
• 1 1/2 tsp chipotle pepper
• Black pepper, to taste
• Dried thyme flakes
• Dried basil flakes

Instructions

1. Preheat your smoker or oven to 250 degrees.
2. Wash & slice your tomatoes, onions, peppers and carrots into small chunks, then place them all into aluminum pans. Sprinkle vegetables with thyme and basil.
3. Smoke vegetables for about 2 hours. If you’re using the oven, roast until vegetables are darkened around the edges and a little wrinkled but still soft (around 40 minutes).
4. Once cooled, run all vegetables through a food mill, catching juices in a stock pot.
5. Bring to a rolling boil on the stove for 10 minutes. Then lower temp and cook on low for 1 hour.
6. In a skillet or air fryer, fry up 6 slices of bacon then crumble into the soup. Add sea salt, chipotle pepper and paprika, then cook on low for another hour, or until the soup reaches your desired thickness. I like my soup a little on the thicker side.
7. Stir in your Parmesan cheese until it’s fully incorporated. Then smooth out soup with an immersion blender. Sprinkle pepper and cheese on top and serve.

NOTE: if you plan on pressure canning your soup, omit the cheese in step 7. You can add cheese to the soup when you reheat.