This Tomato Tarragon Soup recipe was inspired by a trip to Charleston where where we tried some vegan tomato soup at a local restaurant. I'm not a huge tarragon fan, but my husband couldn't stop raving about this soup. I'm pretty sure it was mentioned every day for the rest of the trip, so I knew I'd have to try making it when we got home. I did, and it's been on the menu ever since.
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Canned Tomatoes and Broth
The base ingredients in this soup are canned tomatoes, roasted vegetables and broth. For the tomatoes, I recommend San Marzano. You can use other types of canned tomatoes, but the San Marzano give it a special flavor. You'll also need some packaged chicken or vegetable broth. With vegetable broth the soup is vegan, but with chicken broth it's obviously not. Either broth will give you a fantastic soup, just make sure it's salted or else you'll have to adjust the salt. Then again, when it comes to soup you should always be adjusting the salt to taste.
Other Ingredients
In addition to the two base ingredients, you'll need
- Onion
- Garlic
- Carrots
- Red Bell Pepper or Roasted Red Pepper
- Olive Oil
- Tarragon
- Coconut Milk
- Optional: Red Pepper Flakes and/or a Pepper Flavored Oil
Tomato Tarragon Soup Equipment
The two pieces of equipment I use for this soup are a Dutch oven and an immersion blender. I roast the vegetables directly in a Le Creuset Dutch oven, add the tomatoes, broth and spices, then blend with the immersion blender before adding the broth. The coconut milk goes in near the end. If you don't have a Dutch oven, you can roast the vegetables in a pan and then dump them into whatever pot your are using. As for the immersion blender, a blender is actually much faster but an immersion blender is easy to clean.
Recipe
Tomato Tarragon Soup
Equipment
Ingredients
- 1 large onion (230 grams)
- 6 cloves garlic, peeled
- ⅔ cup cup chopped carrots
- 1 large red bell pepper or 3 oz jarred roasted pepper**
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- salt and pepper for seasoning vegetables (around ½ teaspoon)
- 28 oz can of whole San Marzano tomatoes, undrained
- ¼ cup fresh tarragon leaves, more or less to taste or use 2 ½ teaspoons dried
- 1 ¾ cups vegetable or chicken broth, regular not low sodium
- ¼ cup full fat coconut milk from a can (can use more if desired)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Arrange onion, garlic, carrots and red pepper in a Dutch oven or roasting pan and drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and roast until tender (about 45 minutes). If you are in a hurry, you can sauté the vegetables for a few minutes and roast for a shorter time or just saute until tender.
- Set the Dutch oven with the roasted vegetables on the stove and stir in the tomatoes.
- Using an immersion blender, puree, leaving some chunks of carrot and onion. Alternatively, you can let cool slightly, transfer to a blender and puree.
- Once the soup is to your desired level of smoothness, add the broth and tarragon and heat until mixture begins to simmer. Add the coconut milk, then season with salt and pepper. For a bit of spice, you can add some red pepper flakes if you like.
- Heat until very hot and serve with fresh tarragon on top. Good served as is or finished with a drizzle of pepper flavored oil.
Anna says
Darlene, I sometimes just throw the whole pot on the stove and saute the vegetables, but roasting the vegetables gives them a deeper flavor.
Darlene says
Great time-saving idea to roast in the Dutch oven. Also, I'm excited to try this recipe with coconut milk since one of my sons can't tolerate dairy. Thank you!