- If all you've ever done is
popped a can of Campbell's soup then you've been missing out, my friends, on how good a homemade tomato soup is and what it should taste like. I'm gonna hook that up along with my take on a grilled cheese and what
I think it should look like. Let's get into this by
dicing up some onions. So go ahead and go over
to your cutting board and with this yellow
onion, we are gonna simply cut the ends off of each side. Now go ahead and cut it in half, and now you're gonna peel it. You can discard the peelings,
or save it for stock, totally up to you. And now what we wanna do is medium dice up this yellow onion, and if you have no clue what that means, definitely check out
my video on knife cuts. It will certainly help you there. We're gonna sort of puree all this stuff so the dice doesn't have to be perfect, so if it's a rough dice or a
rough chop, totally cool too. Set it to the side in a bowl, and then go ahead and head
over to your cook top. I've got a decently large
pot, about four quarts. Put it right on the burner. We're gonna be on a medium-low heat throughout this entire cooking process. We're gonna add in just a
bit of butter into this pot. And now pour in your onions. So we're gonna cook these
for about 10 to 15 minutes. We're not gonna get a full caramelization like we would with a French onion soup or something like that, but
this one's for you, comies. To speed up this process a little bit we're gonna add in some sugar, think what happens when
you mix butter and sugar, you get caramel, it's gonna help add some great flavor to the onions, help sweeten them up and of course sometimes
tomatoes can get bitter when simmering them for a long time. So this is gonna help
offset some of that too, just a great add. Do it, you'll learn to
love it and you'll do it when you start caramelizing
onions in other recipes. So after about 12 minutes total, you see they're nice and golden
brown, they're translucent, this is a perfect stage, that's exactly where
you wanna be you guys, and at this point, I'm gonna add in some finely minced garlic. Give that a quick stir
and then, at this point, I'm gonna add in some canned tomatoes. Now if you are in peak season,
like you're watching this, and it's summertime, man, go ahead and check out how
you concasse those tomatoes, like in my sort of Pomodoro recipe. It would be unreal if you got
some garden-fresh tomatoes in this tomato soup, like insane, but on the other side, who
eats soup in summertime? So I totally get it. We're gonna add in a
little bit of chicken stock to sort of thin it out, you can absolutely use veggie stock or even water's totally cool. And we're only gonna cook this for about five to seven minutes. You can break it up with your spoon, don't worry about trying to get this to a nice smooth consistency because we're gonna take care
of that in a few minutes. And after the tomatoes are stewing for about five to six minutes, what I'm gonna do is
add in a little secret. Comies, hear me out again, I'm gonna hit it with
some balsamic vinegar. I mean, ask yourself when
the summertime you know, when you eat those tomato
mozzarella basil salad and you hit it with balsamic vinaigrette, I mean how much better and
flavorful is that tomato? It just takes it to another level. The flavor complexity is so
good and it's such an easy add, I mean most of y'all got balsamic vinegar laying around the house anyways, so hit it with just a little bit of that. Now that it's stood for
that amount of time, I'm gonna puree it. You can use a hand
blender if you have one, one of those, you know (buzzing) one of those type of guys, I'm
gonna use a regular blender because I imagine that most you guys have one of these at home. So this is going to be... Well I guess I should just say be careful because you pour the bowl
right into the blender, chances are tomatoes
are gonna go everywhere. I'm gonna be laughing and
you're gonna be pissed, so... What I usually do is
either take a measuring cup or a liquid measuring cup, scoop some out and pour it into the blender. Now if you have a smaller blender, you can absolutely do this in batches. Don't worry about trying
to fit it all in there if you feel like you're getting close. So once you have everything in there, now to finish off the
soup before we blended it, I'm gonna add some fresh basil leaves. Man this is just gonna
take it to another level, I mean it's fresh basil. It's always good in
everything for some reason. I don't know maybe you hate basil, you can actually use fresh thyme to alter the flavor little bit. From what I'm gonna be serving up with still gonna be absolutely delicious. Okay, so once you have it in there, we're gonna add the lid on top and this is the absolute most
important piece, comies again, I've done this in the restaurant
industry when I was younger and it was probably one of
the craziest things ever. Know that little center cap so to speak, that's in the larger lid over the blender? Man, remove that because
pressure builds up and if you turn this blender on, I mean (puffs) I mean, LeBron, (puffs) You'll have tomatoes everywhere. And your kitchen is gonna be trashed, your spouse is not gonna be happy, your family's gonna laugh at you. Take it off and what I like to do is just add a sort of
kitchen towel right over top, yes it's gonna get some tomatoes in it but you're not gonna blow
the whole kitchen up with homemade tomato soup. So, turn it on, start it slow at first and then work your way up. Should be completely smooth. Once it is to this consistency,
head back over to that pot, pour it in there and now what we want to do
to finish off this soup, I'm gonna hit it with just a touch of heavy whipping cream, just for some body, nice little sheen that's gonna go into it. Salt, pepper, give it a stir, boom, you've got homemade tomato soup and you know homemade
food tastes way better than anything you're
gonna pop out of the can, and often times even what you're gonna get at the restaurants. So you can absolutely do this at home, looking at maybe 25-26 minutes. You've got this, my friends. So, while that soup is
cooking or keeping warm, what you could do is
make a grilled cheese. And that's what we're gonna do. Homemade tomato soup and grilled cheese, doesn't get any more comforting than that. I've got some brioche bread, nice sweet eggy bread that I'm
gonna slice up super thick. No mayonnaise on these, so
head right over to that pan, add in some butter. Soon as it's melted, put
the bread right in there. Same thing, 90 seconds to
two minutes, give it a flip, you can see they're golden brown. We're gonna get the other
side brown of course. Now what I'm gonna do is add
on a little bit of fig jam. This is gonna add some really
cool sweetness and complexity to the rest of the grilled cheese. You can absolutely use
another jam like apricot or even like an orange
marmalade would be super good in this grilled cheese. And now I'm gonna layer this
up, starting with some cheddar, then smoked gouda and last
but not least some provolone, and just to take this thing over the top, a slice of prosciutto ham. I'm telling you right
now, the flavors in this, I mean they're just so, so good, I mean I don't even know what else to say, you're gonna love it. So go ahead and add that
other piece of toast right to the top, let it cook for a few seconds, you want that cheese to
start to get nice and melty. We're done, we've got an
amazing gourmet grilled cheese, who knew but I promise
you the flavor in this one is gonna absolutely blow your mind. To play it up, all I want to do is add a little bit of the tomato soup, serve it up and whatever bowl you want, I got a nice little sort of mug here. Then I finish it with some fresh basil. (slow chill out music) If you're looking for another fantastic homemade
30-minute meal for the fam, then check out my super
delicious beef stir fry and I'll see you on that video.
