RecipePairs with
Three-cheese shokupan toastie
Cheddar, Emmentaler and mozzarella on shokupan, toasted inside first and cooked low
Make the soup first and hold it on low. Cook the toasties last.
Roasted San Marzano tomato soup
Recipes · Roasted San Marzano tomato soup
First revision · 29 SEP 2026
RecipeFirst revisionVia mcp
Roasted San Marzano tomato soup
Split-can tomato soup with fried paste, confit garlic and chipotle, mounted with butter
Tomato soup for 2 from one can of San Marzano tomatoes. Brown the tomato solids and keep the juice raw. Fried tomato paste, confit garlic, chipotle, fish sauce and MSG give depth. Shokupan crusts and an emulsion of olive oil and butter give body. The soup uses no cream.
For
2 servingsWhy the first revision
First version. Made for a tomato soup and grilled cheese dinner with what was on hand: one can of San Marzano tomatoes, double concentrate tomato paste, shokupan, smoked chipotle powder, butter and olive oil.
Garlic oil
1 step- 1 A
Put the garlic in the olive oil in a small pot. Cook at the lowest heat until soft and pale gold.
The oil must bubble slowly. Fast bubbles make the garlic bitter.
Time 25 minWork Fat infusion
Prepare
2 steps- 2 B
Drain the tomatoes over a bowl. Keep the juice.
- 3 B
Keep 1 whole raw tomato, about 50 g, for the end. Crush the other tomatoes flat by hand.
Base
2 steps- 4 C
Heat the butter and 30 ml of the garlic oil in a wide pan on medium heat.
- 5 C
Paste
5 steps- 6 D
Push the onion to the side. Spread the tomato paste thin on the hot pan.
- 7 D
Fry the paste until it is dark brick red and sticks to the pan.
Time 3 min - 8 D
Add 30 ml of the tomato juice. Scrape the pan. Cook until the paste sticks again.
Work Reduction - 9 D
Do the last step 2 or 3 more times. Stop when the layer on the pan is dark mahogany.
Time 5 minWork Reduction - 10 D
Remove the pan from the heat. Stir in the chipotle for 20 seconds.
Direct heat burns the chipotle in seconds. The heat of the pan is enough.
Work Blooming
Tomatoes
2 steps- 11 E
Put the pan on medium-high heat. Add the crushed tomatoes in one flat layer.
- 12 E
Do not stir until the tomatoes brown in patches. Scrape. Do this one more time.
Time 8 min
Simmer
2 steps- 13 F
Add the rest of the juice, the water, the bread, the fish sauce, the MSG and the salt.
- 14 F
Add the garlic cloves from the oil. Keep the rest of the oil. Simmer gently.
Time 15 minWork Simmering
Finish
5 steps- 15 G
Blend the soup until smooth.
Tool blender - 16 G
With the blender running, pour in the rest of the garlic oil slowly.
Work EmulsifyingTool blender - 17 G
Add the raw tomato. Blend for 10 seconds.
Tool blender - 18 G
Off the heat, blend in the cold butter a few cubes at a time.
Work EmulsifyingTool blender - 19 G
Taste. Adjust the thickness with water and the salt with salt. Hold on the lowest heat.
Do not let the soup boil after the butter goes in. A boil splits the fat out.
Notes
61
NOTE · RESEARCH Sources for the method
America's Test Kitchen drains canned tomatoes and browns most of the solids for about 15 min before the juice goes back in.
Serious Eats blends torn bread and olive oil into its tomato soup. This gives body with no cream.
Canned tomatoes often hold added citric acid for safe canning. This gives a harsh sourness. A small pinch of baking soda neutralises some of it.
2
CAUTION · IDEA Baking soda if the tomatoes taste harsh
After the simmer, taste the soup. If the sourness is harsh, add a very small pinch of baking soda and taste again. Too much tastes of soap.
3
CAUTION · IDEA Vinegar drops to finish
Add a few drops of sherry vinegar or red wine vinegar just before serving. This adds aroma and lifts the soup. It does a different job from baking soda: soda removes flat sourness, vinegar adds bright acidity.
4
CAUTION · IDEA Chipotle oil drizzle
Warm 15 ml of olive oil off the heat with a pinch of chipotle. Swirl it on each bowl. The smoke aroma then reaches the nose first.
5
CAUTION · IDEA Other umami options
Melt 1 anchovy fillet into the fat with the paste in place of the fish sauce. Or simmer a Parmesan rind in the soup and remove it before you blend.
6
CAUTION · IDEA Thickness and texture
For a thinner soup, blend in more water or tomato juice. For a thicker soup, add another 20 g of bread. Pass the soup through a fine sieve for a smoother texture.
Related
2RecipeReferenced by
Three-cheese shokupan toastie
Cheddar, Emmentaler and mozzarella on shokupan, toasted inside first and cooked low
A grilled cheese on shokupan for 2. Cheddar gives the flavour. Emmentaler and mozzarella give the melt and the stretch, and they hold the cheddar fat in.
Literature
3The science
5What is actually happening in the dish, and why the techniques work.
M1
Fry the paste in fat, not in water above 100 °C · fat, not water · 2 to 3 deglaze cycles
Water in the pan holds the temperature at 100 °C. At 100 °C the paste only stews.
In fat the paste gets hotter than 100 °C. Its sugars and amino acids then brown in the Maillard reaction. The raw metallic taste goes.
Use liquid only after the paste has browned. It lifts the brown layer off the pan. Each time the liquid reduces and the paste sticks again, one more brown layer forms.
M2
Umami synergy
Tomato holds much free glutamate. Fish sauce adds inosinate. Inosinate makes the tongue respond to glutamate much more strongly than glutamate alone. MSG adds more glutamate.
The soup tastes savoury with less added salt.
M3
Mounting with butter off the boil · cold butter · small cubes
This is monter au beurre: cold butter added at the end of a sauce. Beurre monté is a different thing. It is a butter emulsion used to poach.
Butter is an emulsion. Its milk proteins and phospholipids help hold its fat in the soup. The gelatinised starch from the bread also makes the emulsion more stable. The blender makes smaller fat drops than a whisk, so the emulsion is finer.
A boil after this step breaks the emulsion and the fat separates.
M4
Raw tomato at the end
Cooking removes the green, fresh aroma compounds of tomato. One raw tomato blended in at the end puts them back. The browned solids give depth and the raw tomato gives the top note.
M5
Fat carries the chipotle
The smoke compounds and the capsaicin of chipotle dissolve in fat, not in water. The red pigment of tomato does the same. Blooming the chipotle in the fat spreads it through the whole soup. The finishing oil and butter keep these compounds in the soup.