Monday, January 10, 2011

Soup Success

The other day I made tomato soup to go with grilled cheese sandwiches and dill pickles. To my amazement, the flour did not clump and the milk did not curdle.  For the first time...maybe ever?... I turned out a tomato soup that I would have been proud to serve to company.  It was herbed and tomatoey and creamy, without being overly rich or thick, or too watery or milky.

If you're hoping for a recipe...sorry.  There is none. In fact, I have no idea why it turned out better than usual this time.  I followed my normal pattern of sauteeing onion and lots of garlic in a little butter and oil, stirring in a few tablespoons of flour and a pinch of sugar, sprinkling oregano, basil, salt, and pepper to taste, and dumping in a quart of home-canned tomato juice to heat.  I did deviate from the standard by adding maybe a cup of leftover home-canned pasta sauce.  Then I mixed some hot tomato juice in with a several of cups of milk (1%, to be precise) in the room temperature tomato juice jar before slowly stirring it all back into the soup pot to reheat.

Do you think I can pull off the magic next time?

3 comments:

  1. Hope ;you can pull off the magic next time -maybe when I come to your house. I love tomato soup perfect or not.:)
    dad

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  2. that does sound fantastic. un-curdled tomato soup is such a rare achievment. maybe you could find a way to make it into a 'starter' like the friendship bread stuff and keep it in your freezer and feed it...
    and share some with the rest of us!

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  3. I have this problem too! Sometimes I wonder if it's not the age of the milk. Seems when I use really fresh milk (only a day or two out of the cow) it doesn't curdle quite like 5 or 6 day old milk does.

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