Help with tomato soup--adding milk or ?cream?

[iris lilies]

I made basic tomato soup using our excess garden tomatoes, chicken stock, and seasonings. I froze the batch in various containers.

Now when I take it out to eat and unfreeze it I want to make it creamy, but when I add milk and microwave it, the milk breaks up into bits, I suupose that is "curdling."

What is the secret for making smooth creamy tomato soup?

[CathyA]

When do you add the cream or milk? All the recipes I see that have milk in soups say not to let it boil.
Do you have an immersion blender you could try? Probably a regular blender might work too........but be careful if you use it with hot soup....it can fly out the top.

[ApatheticNoMore]

Might have better luck on the stovetop, microwaves do weird things to stuff - the physics isn't the same. Heat it in a stove top pot with some water until it melts (I run hot water around my containers to gt the frozen chunk loose enough to come out into the pot), milk/cream at the end. I'm not sure the boiling really harms it personally but yea that is what they say.

[Tussiemussies]

The secret to making creamy soups is to make a béchamel sauce first. You take the same amount of butter and flour. First you melt the butter while you sprinkle the flour over it and then quickly stir with a fork until it is all incorporated and not lumpy, don't let it burn though, you have to be fast with it. Then you pour in whole milk and stir until it is all incorporated, no lumps and just lightly simmer until it starts to thicken. Now you are ready to add the rest of your cooked ingredients, stir and it will be very creamy. All cream soups are basically made this way. For the butter and flour it is usually around 3 TBLS each. The milk is the milk portion of your recipe, usually about 2 cups I would say. There are probably I tube videos on how to make this sauce. You can also use this sauce for making other things, make the sauce and while lightly simmering you can add the cheese of your choice, the cheese will melt and you can use it over vegetables, as a fondue there was even a lasagna recipe I made once where I believe the cheese part was Parmesan which you put on the bottom of the pan and then you made lasagna roll-ups and put regular spaghetti sauce on top.

Have fun! Chris

[iris lilies]

The secret to making creamy soups is to make a béchamel sauce first.
I do this for soups such as potato soup.
But I truly thought that the creamy tomato soups I have in restaurants are just cream added to a good tomato base.

Will experiment further and let your all know.

[Tiam]

I'm thinking Tussie might be on to the clue here. I guess it's like when you have to "temper" eggs to put into a sauce.

[ApatheticNoMore]

Yea most tomato soup recipes I've seen just use cream itself, and I've made variants of cream of something between tomato and minestrone with just cream. It doesn't need to be tempered or made into bechamel (though that's standard for brocolli or cauliflower soup), just poured in at the end and the experts say don't boil it. However I've boiled cream to no real harm and it's never curdled so ... well I'm not a gourmet, so maybe there's some subtle reason not to do so. My microwave though, I owned one once, it cooked some things oddly, I gave it away, none of that fancy hi-tech stuff :laff:

[CathyA]

Maybe the tomatoes were exceptionally acidic? That might have curdled the milk.....

[Tiam]

Maybe the tomatoes were exceptionally acidic? That might have curdled the milk.....

Why not? Acids do curdle milk.