fancy canned tomato soup

Guest post by my wonderful, quirky, special sister today!

My daughter LOVES grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. However, plain old canned tomato soup can get a little boring. So one day I decided to look up some recipes to spice things up a little bit. I combined what I liked from a few recipes (and removed anything to hard or lengthy to do) and put together my own version.

This recipe makes enough for four people plus enough for some leftovers but can easily be expanded to make a lot more if you needed it. Before I get into the actual cooking part I should let you know I know just enough to be dangerous in the kitchen which means cooking with me is usually quite comical.  I don’t typically know what spices go good with each other or with other ingredients so I tend to just throw some of my go to spices in everything I cook and fly by the seat of my pants. When I don’t have something (Arborio rice for risotto for example) I just use what I have (because how would I know that long grain rice is so much different) and usually everything turns out just fine. I find the less you know in the kitchen the more willing you are to make substitutions or change things up because, honestly, you don’t know any better. It makes cooking a lot more fun when you can alter a recipe and it makes me feel accomplished when I can pull together a dinner with ingredients I already had and it still tastes great. I find cooking this way saves my family money because I’m not constantly buying expensive spices or items that I probably won’t every use again.  I’ve been a stay at home mom for almost two months now and I haven’t killed anyone with my cooking yet so I have concluded I must be a master chef. 

My biggest dilemma in the kitchen is that I am cooking for a wide variety of tastes. I have what my husband deems “Polish-American” taste buds. I like meat, potatoes and ‘normal’ foods (typically consisting of dishes with pasta, chicken and beef). That means I don’t like anything too fancy or weird, don’t give me something with cumin or Chinese 5-spice (who knows what that is anyway), let’s stick with onions and garlic and salt and pepper. My dad also has similar tastes but has even less desire to step out of his food and spice comfort zone. Next you have my husband who has what I deem “homeless” taste buds. He will eat anything…ANYTHING. The fancier and crazier the dish is the better and extra bonus points if you have never heard of it or can’t pronounce half the ingredients in it. (Ooo and super extra bonus points if most the ingredients come from a specialty store or are nearly impossible to find in a typical grocery store). On the other hand if you were to give him something gross or tasteless he would just cover it in mustard, vinegar, horseradish or a combination of all three and voila it’s gourmet. Now my daughter falls somewhere in the middle. She is two, which means one day she loves noodles and the next day they are disgusting and why would I even offend her by offering them to her. Her tastes for the most part are pretty wide and she seems to like savory and spicier foods (so long as there is no meat on her plate) so cooking this for dinner is right up her alley.

Luckily this dish satisfies everyone in our house!

Fancy canned tomato soup

Ingredients:

1 medium onion

1 tbsp. diced garlic

2 tbsp. butter

2 cans diced tomatoes

2 cans tomato soup

milk

1 (or more) tbsp. dried basil

pepper

1-2 tsp. garlic and/or onion powder (optional)

4 ounces of cream cheese

First, I cook some onions and minced garlic in the bottom of my soup pot with some butter. Use as much or as little as you would like. I typically use one medium-large onion and a heaping spoonful of garlic and how much butter you need to cook that in. If you don’t have garlic on hand add some garlic powder or just leave the garlic out completely.

Once those are cooked to your desired…doneness, add two cans of diced tomatoes. If you don’t have diced you could substitute crushed or stewed tomatoes or even better tomatoes you have canned yourself. I like my soup to have the chunks in it and I think diced is just the right size, not too big or too small. The cans I use are 14.5 ounces each. You could easily add a third can in to make a little more soup.  

Next, add in two cans of tomato soup (any brand will do) and then I usually fill one can up with water and dump it in and then one can up with milk and add that in. You could do both water or both milk or even some cream if you wanted it richer.

For spices, I typically add a decent amount of basil in the soup at this point and a little pepper. I find it doesn’t really need salt because of the amount in the canned soup but do whatever your taste buds enjoy. Sometimes I add a dash of garlic and/or onion powder if I think it needs something more. Go with what tastes good to you.

FINALLY, the last and best step is to take half of a block of cream cheese and cut it up into small cubes. Dump those into the soup and continue to cook until the cheese has melted. This does take a little bit of time, maybe 20 minutes, obviously the smaller the pieces you cut the quicker they melt. This makes the soup very creamy and extra tasty. If you left this step out then I would do all milk from the earlier steps instead of the one can of water and maybe a dash of cream or half and half if you had it lying around.

So there you have it, it seems long typed out but it is actually really quick to throw together up until the cream cheese part. I usually use that time to set the table and start assembling my grilled cheese sandwiches.

I hope your family loves this soup as much as we do!