This creamy soup is the perfect sidekick for a hot grilled cheese sandwich. Make it from scratch to avoid that nasty aluminum can taste and to control the amount of sodium and sugar in your diet.
Into a stock pot over medium heat place butter, thyme, sliced onion, and garlic. You could tie the thyme sprigs together with twine if you'd like. Cook until onion is translucent or see through, apx 10-12 minutes.
8 Tbsp stick butter, 1 medium onion, sliced thin, 4 cloves fresh garlic, rough chopped, 16.9 g fresh thyme
Next, drop in your tomato paste and crank he heat up to medium-high. You'll stir your paste and onion mixture until they caramelize (brown spots will show up on your tomato paste). Apx 5-6 minutes
6 oz tomato paste
Add your diced tomatoes with the juice to the pot. Sprinkle 1 tsp of your sugar across the tomatoes, then pour in your chicken broth. Over high heat, bring your soup to a simmer. Reduce heat and simmer until the flavors meld and soup reduces (apx 45-55 minutes).
Once soup has simmered and reduced, remove from heat and allow to cool. You will remove the thyme stems at this time.
Next, you blend your soup. It's easiest with an immersion blender, but you can also use a blender. You'll probably need to do the blender in smaller batches. Return blended soup to stock pot.
Pour in your desired amount of cream or milk product. Add salt and pepper to taste, add the rest of your sugar if you like your tomato soup sweeter. Allow milk product to warm up and flavors to combine, maybe 10 more minutes.
1/2 cup heavy cream/whipping cream, 2 tsp sugar, divided
Notes
If you'd like to lower the calorie count, reduce butter to 4 TbspYou can use either a sweet onion, (for a sweeter taste) yellow onion, or white onion. I would avoid the red onion as it will dye the soup.I have tried tying my thyme sprigs together with twine, and they still managed to break lose. If you really don't want to hunt the thyme sprigs, use dried thyme.I make my own chicken broth using Knorr bouillon. 1 cup boiling water to 1 tsp bouillon.