Ingredients for Tomato Basil Soup

There is nothing more comforting that a bowl of warm soup on a cold winter day, or a steaming cup of Mom’s chicken noodle soup when you are feeling sick. The great thing about soup is that you can use any variety of ingredients and they are often quite simple to make. Primarily a combination of meat, vegetables, or legumes, in stock or hot water, soup has been a favorite dish for centuries and comes from the word “sop”, meaning a piece of bread served with some type of liquid. There are two main classifications of soups: clear soups and thick soups. Whether you are making a clear bouillon based soup or a thick creamy soup, there’s no doubt that soup is an easy and great dish to accompany any meal.

In this free video recipe, our expert Chef will teach you how to make a creamy tomato basil soup. You will get easy to follow step-by-step instructions on how to chop the tomatoes, shallots, garlic and onions for this tasty soup. You will also get tips on chopping the basil, simmering and pureeing the soup, and adding the right garnish. If you looking for a soup that's not a plain tomato soup, let our expert show you this flavorful tomato basil soup recipe.

"My name is Brandon Sarkis on behalf of Expert Village. Today I am going to be making creamy Tomato Basil Soup. Okay let's go ahead and get started with the things that we need today. You are going to need 12 vine ripened tomatoes here. They are normal sized tomatoes. I say 12. If they were bigger obviously, we would go fewer but we are going to go 12. These are just 12 normal size tomatoes. I've got 12 cloves of garlic over here. Just individual cloves like this so basically rule is 1 clove of garlic per tomato; sounds like a lot. Trust me, it's delicious. I've got 2 shallots here. I have 2 ounces of fresh basil. Don't use the dried stuff. It's not going to come out right. It is going to taste funny. Fresh basil is the way to go. One yellow onion. I'm using a pretty large yellow actually. The rule for this basically is a half a cup for every 6 tomatoes. Therefore 12 tomatoes, one whole onion. This is a yellow onion. You can use other kinds if you want but I prefer a sweet yellow onion. Also red onions work well in this too. I've also got about a cup here of tomato puree. This is actually canned. The reason I have this is in the event that you are making this and your tomatoes are not quite up to speed color wise and maybe even taste wise, this is just a good bolster for the flavor, color. You get that nice red color and also you'll get the nice texture. These look fine and I am going to go ahead and throw in there for consistency sake. i've also got 2 cups of heavy whipping cream and right here the salt and pepper. So with that, let me show you what you are going to need to get this done and move on to the next step."