What happened to my tomato soup?

[wsmoak]

I blanched and peeled 6 lbs of tomatoes last week, and decided to make tomato soup with some of them.

So... I weighed out the same amount as the canned tomatoes I would have used, and did the usual onion-garlic-carrot saute before adding them in, simmered for 30 minutes, hit it with the had blender, and... it does NOT taste like tomato at all!

Are the canned diced tomatoes cooked down for a while before canning? Is it just the horrible hot and dry weather making my tomatoes not very tomato-ey?

I tried to save it by adding some tomato paste plus a frozen serving of the last batch which was closer to ketchup (didn't notice there was salt in the canned tomatoes and added more.) That helped a bit, but the real save was by blending in some roasted red peppers we made yesterday. Now it tastes good, if still not very tomato-ey.

How do you make tomato soup starting with *fresh* tomatoes?

-Wendy

 

[lesa]

How do the tomatoes taste, raw?? I can't imagine why it wouldn't have a tomato taste....

 

[wsmoak]

The tomatoes taste fine to me fresh in salads...

I'm going to try cooking them down next time to get rid of more of the water.

I wonder what variety they normally use for canned diced tomatoes... Roma?

-Wendy

 

[lesa]

Cooking them down should help-maybe they were just too watery. I am sure they use a dryer tomato-roma or any type of paste tomato. When you cooked it for 30 minutes, had it thickened at all?

 

[Dave2000]

I like pretty rich tomato soup and also find I need to boil it down longer than 30 minutes... usually an hour or more depending on how much other ingredients add liquid to it.