Tomato Soup without Meat with Vermicelli and Fresh Tomatoes

Tomato Soup without Meat

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Not long ago, quite unexpectedly, I discovered soups with fresh tomatoes added right before serving. It’s a somewhat unusual approach for us. Unlike an ordinary soup, tomato soup becomes tastier and pleases the eye. It turns out that adding fresh tomatoes to finished soups is not rare in world cuisines.

I always believed that tomato soup should be made with tomato paste or a purée of ripe tomatoes, and ideally the tomato is the base of the soup. In summer we often make the refreshing tomato soup gazpacho, using the common Spanish version as a base.

But even in the hot season, few people will refuse a plate of hot soup for breakfast. I admit I’m not a big fan of soup for breakfast, but chicken noodle soup I will definitely eat. Quite often at home for breakfast we make pasta with various simple sauces. Such morning dishes keep you full until lunch and are cooked very quickly. The simplest option is pasta with tomatoes: a tomato sauce made from fresh tomatoes with pieces of uncooked tomato added.

For breakfast, a thick soup of tomatoes and tiny soup noodles is ideal. The special soup pasta that every manufacturer makes is small and cooks very quickly. Types of soup pasta usually sold include vermicelli, anelli, filini and so on. They differ in shape and size, but the essence is the same: plain dried dough made from high-quality durum wheat flour.

Tomato soup with vegetables and tiny soup noodles can be made with any ripe tomatoes. Size doesn’t matter. But if the tomatoes are large, you should peel them and remove the seeds.

When you are going to make a tomato soup, you need to prepare ripe but not overripe, soft tomatoes. If the tomatoes are overripe, they will make a good homemade ketchup , but you shouldn’t add them to the soup. As a base for the soup, cook a vegetable broth and dress it with onion fried with tomato. Boil the tiny noodles so that the soup with tomatoes is thick. And at the very end, add fresh tomatoes and plenty of herbs.

19 ingredientsTo the recipe
More with tomatoes

Ingredients

2 servings

  • For the broth
  • Water 1 l
  • Carrot 1
  • Onion 1
  • Garlic 1-2 cloves
  • Dried hot pepper 1-2 pods
  • Coriander seeds 1/4 tsp
  • Black peppercorns 1/4 tsp
  • Allspice a few berries
  • Dried Mediterranean herb mix 0.5 tsp
  • For the tomato dressing
  • Onion 1
  • Large ripe tomato 1
  • Olive oil 1 tbsp
  • Salt a pinch
  • Sugar a pinch (optional)
  • For the soup and serving
  • Tiny soup noodles 100 g
  • Small red tomatoes or cherry tomatoes 200 g
  • Parsley 5-6 sprigs
  • Salt, ground black pepper to taste
  • Coarsely ground hot pepper a pinch

Step-by-step recipe

Vegetable broth

  1. To cook the noodles and make the tomato soup, you first need to prepare a vegetable broth. It’s enough to simmer the standard set of soup vegetables and roots.

  2. Bring 1 l of water to a boil in a pot.

  3. Add a peeled carrot cut in half, 1-2 peeled garlic cloves and a whole peeled onion. If you like, you can add parsnip, parsley and celery root.

    Cooking a vegetable broth.

  4. Put the spices in a sachet bag or a piece of loose nylon cloth tied in a knot and drop it into the broth. That way the spices don’t float around, they flavor the broth, and you can take them out at the right moment and throw them away.

    I advise using 1-2 dried hot peppers, which won’t add much heat to the soup. Add a quarter teaspoon each of coriander seeds and black (mixed) peppercorns, a few allspice berries and 0.5 tsp of dried aromatic herbs typical of Mediterranean cuisine, such as oregano, savory, basil and so on.

    Spices for the soup.

  5. Simmer the vegetables with the spices over low heat, so the broth barely bubbles, for up to half an hour.

  6. Throw away the bag of spices and the onion, and keep the boiled carrot and garlic for serving.

    Vegetables for the soup.

Tomato dressing

  1. Make the dressing while the broth is cooking.

  2. Peel a medium onion and chop it finely with a knife.

  3. Heat the olive oil in a saucepan and fry the onion over medium heat, stirring constantly, until golden.

    Fried onion.

  4. Meanwhile, peel the large ripe tomato, remove the seeds, and chop the pulp finely with a knife. The skin comes off easily if you score the tomato with a cross and dip it into boiling water for half a minute.

  5. Add the tomato to the fried onion and season with a pinch of salt. If you like, especially if the tomato isn’t the ripest, you can add a pinch of sugar. Fry the onion with the tomato for 3-4 mins.

  6. Add a quarter cup of broth from the pot and stew under a lid over low heat for more than 10 mins. The dressing should be thick enough, and the onion completely soft.

    Adding the tomato to the onion.

Soup with noodles

  1. When the broth is cooked and the tomato dressing is ready, combine them in the pot and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the tiny pasta.

    Don’t use pasta of unknown origin. Most likely, cheap noodles from an unknown manufacturer are made from soft wheat flour, and such pasta overcooks very quickly and swells. For this soup you need high-quality pasta made from durum wheat flour. Tiny noodles in the form of short threads (filini), small rings (anelli), little stars (stelline) and others work well.

    Soup noodles.
    Adding the noodles.

  3. Stirring, cook the noodles in the soup until done. Tiny pasta cooks very quickly, usually 3-4 mins. The cooking time is always given on the package, and the manufacturer guarantees al dente in that time. Don’t overcook the noodles.

    The soup shouldn’t be reheated, it’s eaten right away while it’s hot. As it cools, the pasta swells and the soup is left with almost no liquid, just pasta boiled in broth.

    Cooking until done.

Serving

  1. Season the soup with salt and ground pepper to taste. As soon as the soup is ready, ladle it into bowls right away.

  2. Cut the small tomatoes in half and add them directly to the bowls. The fresh tomatoes in this soup are not cooked.

  3. Sprinkle generously with finely chopped parsley. I advise sprinkling the soup just before serving with a pinch of coarsely ground dried hot pepper, the piquant flavor is something else!

    Adding tomatoes to the soup.

  4. Add the boiled carrot from the broth, cut into strips, and the boiled garlic cloves to the bowls. As I said, the soup should be eaten while it’s fresh and hot. The soup goes well with bruschetta, especially with mozzarella and basil.

    Tomato soup

Calories and macros

140 kcal

Serving ≈ 780 g

  • Protein3 g8% of kcal
  • Fat7 g50% of kcal
  • Carbs14 g42% of kcal

100 g18 kcalProtein 0.3 gFat 1 gCarbs 1.8 g

Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.

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