Thursday, May 14, 2015

Velvety Tomato & Rice Soup

I adore tomato soup. I don't think I've ever had a tomato soup I didn't like, and that includes the stuff in the red and white cans.

But home made tomato soup is soooo much better. And it's easy. You can, of course, start with fresh tomatoes, which makes it a little more time consuming. But canned tomato products are pretty darned good, not expensive, and available in a lot of different forms, from whole to diced to crushed to sauce to puree.

When I saw a recipe for tomato soup in Cook it Slow, Cook it Fast by the Mr. Food Test Kitchen, I figured I'd give it a try. Even though it's spring, we're still having some chilly days. And today it was rainy. Perfect soup weather.

I made one (somewhat major) change to this recipe - I added half of an onion. You can leave it out, if you like, but I thought it was a good addition.

The book is all about using either a slow cooker or a pressure cooker for the recipes - two of my favorite cooking methods.

This soup uses a slow cooker. It's one of the simplest tomato soup recipes I've made, and it's also really, really rich because of the heavy cream. But that's okay. Sometimes it's good to go for something rich.

Velvety Tomato and Rice Soup
Adapted from Cook it Slow, Cook it Fast by the Mr. Food Test Kitchen

2 28-ounce cans crushed tomatoes
1/2 onion, finely diced
1 tablespoon sugar
1.2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
2 cups (1 pint) heavy cream
1 1/2 cups cooked white rice, warm

Combine the tomatoes, onion, sugar, garlic powder, salt, and pepper in a slow cooker, and stir to combine. Cook on low for 6 hours or high for 3 hours.

Stir in the rice, then, while stirring continuously, add the heavy cream. Cook just until the soup is re-warmed from adding the cream, stirring as needed. Don't let it come to a boil.

Serve hot.

If you have leftovers, reheat slowly an don't let the soup come to a boil or you risk having the cream curdle in the soup.
Yum