Farmstead tomato soup

The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Farmstead tomato soup

We love harvest catch-all soup, but sometimes eating it endlessly in the winter gets a little old. So I decided to expand our repertoire this year to include a second soup --- farmstead tomato.

Tomato and basil soup Our new soup includes:

1 gallon of fresh tomatoes (which squeeze down to about half a gallon of tomato mush)
6 cups of chicken stock
6 onions
6 cloves of garlic
1/2 to 1 cup of fresh basil leaves
1 cup of fresh goat milk
salt, pepper, and honey to taste

The soup is almost too easy to make. I cut tomatoes into large chunks while topping them and removing spots (leaving skin and seeds in), then squeeze the result with my hands to assist the break-down process.

After adding the chicken stock, onions, and garlic, I simmer for about an hour and a half. Then I cool the soup for about half an hour before adding the basil and blending it in well with an immersion blender.

Finally, I pour in the milk and add salt, pepper, and a bit of honey (more sweetening if the tomato plants are blighted, less if they're not).

The result is about a gallon of deliciously creamy tomato soup with every ingredient except the salt and pepper coming straight from the farm. Enjoy!

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.

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Tomato Soup

Nice recipe. If you have a Hand Blender (immersion blender) then may I suggest the following: Boil water and throw the tomatoes in there until the skins start to separate. Immediately take the tomatoes out of the boiling water and throw them into ice water (if you have it) or cold water, to cool them down. The skins will peel off easily. Take the resultant mass and put them in a bowl and use the hand blender to puree the whole mess, seeds included. You now have tomato stock you can use for soup, sauce, whatever... and you can can it as well for future use.

Comment by Nayan — Tue Aug 9 09:15:17 2016