I saw a recipe for tomato soup with grilled cheese croutons in my Cuisine at Home magazine a while back, and I just got super excited about the croutons. What a good idea! The problem is that the recipe for the soup really didn’t appeal to me very much so I held off on making it for quite a while. It involved some expensive ingredients like saffron that I am just never going to be willing to spend money on. I loved the idea of the croutons so much that I decided to find another recipe for tomato soup and make the croutons to go with it. I landed on Ina Garten’s recipe for roasted tomato basil soup.

This soup turned out super delicious, and it was the perfect texture for tomato soup. You have to transfer it to a blender or food processor before serving, and I kept it just the slightest bit chunky. The only thing that I screwed up on is that I went a little overboard with the red pepper flakes. I’m pretty sure I started crying at one point while eating this soup because it was so spicy. You should probably measure your ingredients instead of just throwing things in like I did. I changed up the amount of basil in this recipe because it seemed a little too excessive. If you really like basil you might want to add more. I also cut the amount of onions in half so the recipe below has the amounts that I used.

Tomato Basil Soup

3 lbs Roma tomatoes, cut in half lengthwise

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon kosher salt

1 1/2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper

1 yellow onion, chopped

6 garlic cloves, minced

2 tablespoons butter

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

1 (28-oz) can plum tomatoes, with juice

1 cup fresh basil leaves, packed

1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

4 cups chicken stock or water

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Toss together the tomatoes, 1/4 cup olive oil, salt and pepper. Spread the tomatoes in a single layer on a baking sheet and roast for 45 minutes.

In a large stockpot over medium heat, saute the onions and garlic with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, the butter, and red pepper flakes for 10 minutes, until the onions start to brown. Add the canned tomatoes, basil, thyme, and chicken stock.

Add the oven-roasted tomatoes, including the liquid on the baking sheet.

Bring to a boil and simmer uncovered for 40 minutes. Transfer to a blender or food processor and pulse until it is the texture you like. Season if needed and serve with the grilled cheese croutons.

Grilled Cheese Croutons

4 slices country white bread

Butter (enough to spread on each slice of bread)

4 ounces Gruyere cheese, sliced

The directions for this say to use a panini grill, but I don’t have one so I just used a grill pan and pressed the sandwich down with another pan on top. Butter one side of each slice of bread and place cheese slices on the unbuttered sides. Grill the sandwiches, buttered sides down, for about 5 minutes until nicely browned. Let sit on a cutting board for about a minute before cutting into 1-inch squares. Serve with tomato soup.

