Best-Ever Tomato-Basil Soup (Made with Fresh Tomatoes!)

It seems cruel that by the time crisp days arrive, the days when we most long for that easy, favorite cardigan in the catalogue of soups — comforting, rich tomato soup — actual tomatoes are gone from the farmers market. We turn by necessity to canned tomatoes instead, and round them out with a healthy dose of dairy. 

But summer, with its sticky, fragrant evenings and tomato plants hanging heavy with fruit, calls for a tomato soup of its own. When you’ve had your fill of juicy Caprese salads, and your garden’s tomato harvest is lining your countertop like storm clouds on the horizon, this is the recipe to make.

It uses fresh tomatoes and fresh basil — both in high supply at this time of year — and has just 3 additional ingredients (yellow onion, garlic, and olive oil). It’s also easy as it gets to make, and fast; it is summertime, after all.

When we count ingredients, we don’t usually count salt, pepper, or cooking oil. But the olive oil plays a starring role in this recipe. In addition to what you’ll use to soften the onions and garlic, you’ll drizzle some in at the end of cooking while you purée the soup.

This technique, borrowed from gazpacho recipes, emulsifies the oil into the mixture, giving the soup a lush but still light texture — no dairy (or roux, sometimes used to make a soup velvety) required. Use an olive oil you love; you’ll definitely taste it here.

Frankly, I can never be bothered to skin and seed tomatoes, and so this recipe doesn’t ask you to. (Some say there’s a superior texture if you do skin and seed, which requires a careful series of blanching and straining operations, but I don’t find there to be much of a difference, particularly because this soup will be puréed anyway.)

All you have to do is roughly chop the tomatoes — firm, fleshy romas and on-the-vine varieties are best here, as that flesh makes up most of the soup’s body — and add them to the pot with the softened aromatics. As they soften, they’ll release enough liquid that you won’t have to add stock, which means you’re dealing with pure, fresh tomato flavor.