This tomato basil soup is one of my all time favourite family recipes. My mom has been making this soup for YEARS. Mmmm… It’s the perfect soup recipe for summer! The flavours are perfect, and it always tastes amazing!
I grew up in a big house on a huge property in the country. We were surrounded by farms, (I could hear cows mooing and the donkeys braying (yep, totally had to google what that sound was called) if I listened carefully…), but we were definitely not farmers. Every year when I was little, I’d beg my mom to plant a vegetable garden, and even though we had tons of space, we didn’t have the best green thumbs when it came to growing food. But we always managed to grow tons of tomatoes, tons of parsley and tons of basil. Those seemed to be the fool proof things that we could pull off each year. We’d collect them from our messy little garden patch and my mom would whip up a batch of this amazing tomato basil soup.
I still struggle with growing vegetables in my backyard. I try, I really do, but if I try growing new and different vegetables, I end up getting, say, one green pepper that I end up “saving” until it shrivels up and falls off, and two overgrown baseball bat sized zucchinis. That and a whole garden full of weeds. Did I mention, I don’t put any effort into my garden patch?
My vegetable garden is a little embarrassing, but I’m pretty sure more people would notice the broken sandbox toys that are all over the grass – or rather the field of dandelions that we call a lawn. If anyone raises their eyebrows when they go into our backyard, I’m pretty sure it’s not because of the overgrown garden boxes with tomato plants creeping out and almost falling over. Hopefully they think to themselves, “Wow, three slides, a swingset, a sandbox, a wagon and a mini coup. Kids definitely live here!” Priorities, right?
So I’ve kind of given up on growing anything other than tomatoes, basil and parsley in our garden boxes in the backyard. Which actually works out PERFECTLY for this soup! The tomatoes aren’t ready yet, but when they are, man oh man, I bet this soup will taste even more amazing than it already does!
The BEST Tomato Basil Soup Recipe
The full printable recipe is at the bottom of this post, but here’s what you’ll need:
- Tomatoes
- Basil
- Parsley
- Carrots
- Onions
- Chicken Stock
- Garlic
- Butter
- Secret Ingredient – Lemon Juice!
Roma tomatoes were on sale at the store, so that’s what I used when I made it, but you can use your favourite variety. The redder and sweeter the better!
I diced the tomatoes, but I didn’t go crazy making them overly small. I also didn’t peel them. You can peel them if you want, but as long as you chop them like mine or smaller, you won’t really notice the peels in your soup. Or at least I didn’t notice them.
You start by simmering all the veggies together to make the broth. This was chicken broth, onions, garlic, and tomatoes before I blended them.
I have to admit, I’m slightly in love with my hand held blender. I don’t really know what it’s called officially? We call it a “soup whipper” because it’s so darn convenient for making blended soups. There’s no need to remove the soup from the pot, you just blend it right in the pot.
Add the herbs at the very end when everything is finished cooking. I chopped my herbs super fine and stirred them in. You can blend them in if you want to, but I had a fear that it might make my soup turn green. I’m sure it wouldn’t turn green. Or brown. But I didn’t want to risk it. 🙂
Top it with a little bit of grated parmesan cheese, some more basil or parsley and some pepper. Mmmm…
Serve it hot with fresh garlic bread. Yum! It’s such a fresh recipe for summer! Those sweet tomato and basil flavours go together so perfectly!
If you find the flavour needs just a little something, add a squirt of lemon juice. I don’t usually have fresh lemons in my fridge, so I used lemon juice from concentrate. Oh my goodness, when I added the lemon juice it went from “meh” to “holy amazing flavour in my mouth!”
The BEST Tomato Basil Soup Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 Tablespoons butter
- 2 medium cloves garlic minced
- 2 medium carrots peeled and diced
- 1 medium onion chopped
- 4 cups chicken stock
- 1 cup Water
- 8 roma tomatoes or 6 regular tomatoes, chopped
- 1/4 cup fresh basil finely chopped
- 1/2 cup fresh parsely finely chopped
- Secret Ingredient - A squirt or two of concentrated lemon juice
Instructions
- In a large pot, melt butter over medium heat. Stir in garlic, carrots and onions.
- Cook over medium-low heat until the onion is tender.
- Add the chicken stock and water, cover and simmer for 20 minutes.
- Stir in the tomatoes and simmer for another 10 minutes.
- Remove from heat and use a hand held blender to blend the soup until smooth.
- Stir in the basil and parsley.
- Add salt and pepper to taste.
- If the flavour is flat, add 1 to 2 squirts of lemon juice to taste.
- Serve hot with fresh garlic bread!
This tomato basil soup recipe is PERFECT for summer! Serve it hot with fresh garlic bread and Mmmmm… You can make it with store bought tomatoes, or you can use those awesome garden grown tomatoes from the backyard. If you’re anything like me, surely you can pull off a few tomato plants with some basil and parsley. Trust me, my plants aren’t perfect, and my tomatoes end up having spots on them, but the great thing about this soup, is that no one will ever know! 🙂
You may also enjoy these other tomato basil recipes:
Cherry Tomato and Basil Rotini:
Michelle says
I made this tonight and the flavor was delicious. I forgot to add in the water, oops! I did use an emersion blender, but I could not get the soup smooth. I then tried a regular blender and still could not get it smooth. Was yours? I guess I expected it to be so was surprised that there was a little texture.
Michelle says
Oops…immersion not emersion!
Jeanne says
My daughter and I just finished making a double batch of this soup. It is absolutely delicious. We are going to freeze most of it in pint and quart containers. We will give some to my 85-y/o dad, who’s in assisted living but is with the program enough to be able to dump some frozen soup into a 1 1/2 quart slow cooker and heat it up, and loves tomato soup. We will also give some to my daughter’s best friend, who is a nursing student in a very demanding program and also loves tomato soup. We don’t keep a vegetable garden here due to the number of marauding critters in the area, but we found a good deal on Roma tomatoes at Aldi a few days ago, and I do plant herbs every spring so the basil and parsley were straight out of the garden. Thank you so much for the inspiration. This recipe is definitely a keeper.
Kirsty-Anne Bissell says
My second glutch of tomatoes basil and parsley from the garden, here’s hoping that next year’s soup includes home grown carrots minion and garlic, no juice needed yummy
Kerrie says
It was so delicious. It was good I used fresh lemon juice instead
Kerrie says
It was so good and hearty I used fresh lemon juice
Kerrie says
Sorry I meant to put 5 stars
Mary says
Hi, I found this when looking for a tomato basil soup recipe and made it this morning. I didn’t have chicken stock, so I used the one cup of homemade shrimp stock I had with three cups of water. To make up for lack of stock I put in a few celery stalks and extra fresh herbs- a few sprigs of thyme and a couple sage leaves. Plus salt and pepper. It turned out really well. The rest of my family said it was an A plus. Thanks a lot!
Danielle says
The devil is in the details as they say…..
Love the tip for the herbs.
Looks great.
Can’t wait to try it.
Suz says
I do not have an immersion blenders. I do have an old electric hand mixer. Will that work?
Janet says
I am getting ready to make it for the second time. The first time I made it my husband reminded me that he doesn’t like tomato soup. I love it, so I forged on. Guess who not only tasted the soup, but had seconds and asked for more the next night! It was super easy and was delicious. (And quick to make). I used regular tomatoes I had in the frig. This time I am using Roma tomatoes. Thanks so much for sharing this recipe.
Betsy says
Can you use canned tomatoes?