Simply Recipes / Photo by Morgan Hunt Ward / Prop Styling by Claire Spollen / Food Styling by Margaret Monroe Dickey
Why Make This
Only five ingredients and five minutes of prep time make this soup almost effortless to assemble.
Crushed tomatoes with basil add lots of flavor with no need for blending later.
You can easily customize the soup with toppings like fresh basil, parmesan, or a drizzle of extra cream.
Throughout the summer, you can find me lovingly tending my tomato plants in my vegetable garden. Somehow, growing them from seed, endlessly watering, weeding, and pruning them, and whispering them words of encouragement week after week seems totally worth it for a perfect, just-picked tomato sandwich or caprese salad.
But in the winter? Oof. No effort, please, I beg of you. The thought of doing almost any task feels like a gargantuan undertaking when I am in hibernation mode.
That’s why I lean hard on my slow cooker in the colder months, particularly with recipes that require almost no prep. I love to load a bunch of ingredients in there, let it all bubble away and fill my home with lovely aromas, then come back later to find dinner at the ready for me, cozily keeping warm.
And for a little bit of that summer garden sunshine in winter, nothing is finer than this dead-simple tomato soup.
Simply Recipes / Photo by Morgan Hunt Ward / Prop Styling by Claire Spollen / Food Styling by Margaret Monroe Dickey
The Easiest Tomato Soup Ever
When summer tomatoes are a long-distant memory (and energy reserves are low), opening up a can is absolutely the way to go. Crushed tomatoes with basil add tons of flavor in just one no-prep ingredient, and their already-crushed texture means I don’t need to bother with blending the soup at the end of cooking, either.
Rather than dicing an onion, simply quartering it instead and dropping it into the slow cooker imparts plenty of flavor without extra work (and no distracting onion pieces in the finished soup). A touch of garlic and some rich sweetness from butter and cream round everything out. After just five minutes of prep, the slow cooker takes it from there. A few hours later, all you’ll need is a grilled cheese for dunking—if you can bear to make one, of course.
Simply Recipes / Photo by Morgan Hunt Ward / Prop Styling by Claire Spollen / Food Styling by Margaret Monroe Dickey
How to Make This 5-Ingredient Slow Cooker Tomato Soup
This recipe was developed by Craig Ruff. To make six servings, you’ll need:
Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 4 hours
2 (28-ounce) cans crushed tomatoes with basil
1 large yellow onion (about 12 ounces), quartered lengthwise
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 cloves garlic, chopped fine
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more for garnish
1/2 cup heavy cream, plus more for garnish, optional
In a 6-quart slow cooker, stir together the crushed tomatoes, onion, chicken stock, butter, garlic, salt, and pepper. Cover and cook until the flavors meld, about 4 hours on high or 6 hours on low.
Remove and discard the onion quarters. Stir in the cream, if using, and serve, garnishing with more cream and black pepper, if desired.
Tips, Tricks, and Easy Upgrades
For an ultra-smooth soup, blend it with an immersion blender directly in the slow cooker at the end of cooking. This is particularly helpful if you don’t have crushed tomatoes on hand and want to substitute whole peeled tomatoes.
Given how few ingredients there are in this recipe, quality matters. Use high-quality canned tomatoes and a nice chicken stock (this is a great moment to use up that container of homemade stock you have stashed in your freezer!).
For even more basil flavor, add a few fresh basil sprigs to the slow cooker during cooking, then remove them when you take out the onion pieces.
Top it all off with chopped fresh basil, a sprinkle of parmesan, or some croutons. My personal favorite topping is Goldfish crackers!
Simply Recipes / Photo by Morgan Hunt Ward / Prop Styling by Claire Spollen / Food Styling by Margaret Monroe Dickey
More Easy Slow Cooker Meals
Read the original article on Simply Recipes
Dining and Cooking