The Best Grilled Cheese And Tomato Soup Recipe You Need To Make

When you are looking for a comforting dish to make to either help you to feel better or to warm you up on a chilly day, then tomato soup and grilled cheese should be up there.

What makes this dish even better is that it consists of very healthy ingredients. Thus, not only does it taste amazing, but also really nutritious and beneficial for you.

No longer should you be reheating soup from a can, as this recipe is incredibly easy to recreate. While any type of grilled sandwich works well with tomato soup, you cannot go wrong with the classic and tangy grilled cheese.

We have all the steps you need to follow in order to make this delicious grilled cheese and tomato soup recipe. Read on to learn how you can make this dish yourself!

Why Is Homemade Tomato Soup And Grilled Cheese Better Than Premade?

The main reason why you should try this recipe for grilled cheese and tomato soup is that it is far healthier than premade options.

Compared to handmade tomato soup, canned tomato soup is much less nutritious. Famous Campbell’s tomato soup in a can has four servings of vegetables per serving, which is far less than this homemade version.

By creating your own tomato soup, you may make your grilled cheese sandwich healthier by using less processed components.

For example, the amount of salt in a cup of homemade tomato soup is about 100 mg, which is considerably less than Campbell Soup.

Therefore, by creating your own homemade soup and grilled cheese, you can know for certain what is going into the soup. You can then make substitutions for it to suit your diet and to make it even more healthy.

Why Does Tomato Soup And Grilled Cheese Go Together?

In the United States, grilled cheese sandwiches soon gained popularity as a lunch option in the 1900s. Campbell’s Soup Company started selling tomato soup in the 1930s.

The combination of this soup and grilled cheese sandwiches quickly gained popularity. Since then, it has become customary to combine the two foods.

It is common to see these two dishes together. Especially, as it is a great mix of sweet and savory. Grilled cheese can have quite a savory and salty flavor, while tomato soup has an earthy, and sweet flavor profile.

The two dishes then balance one another out, to create a truly delicious meal that everyone around the world enjoys consuming.

Ingredients Required In This Recipe

It may look like there are a lot of ingredients required for this recipe, but they are very simple and common ingredients.

You will be able to get all the ingredients for both the grilled cheese and the tomato soup from your local grocery store.

Grilled Cheese Ingredients

You will need the following to create this delicious grilled cheese to accompany your tomato soup:

• 8 x Thick Slices of Bread – Your bread needs to be thickly sliced, so a sourdough bread or crusty will work well in this situation.
• ½ Stick of Salted Butter – We advised you to use salted butter, as this will add flavor and help the bread to become really crisp.
• Cheese – You can any type of cheese, but if you wish to make a classic grilled cheese, then cheddar needs to be used.

It is important to note, that these measurements will allow you to make 4 grilled sandwiches, but you can alter the quantities depending on the amount of people you wish to serve.

Tomato Soup Ingredients

This tomato soup uses simple and fresh ingredients. You need the following ingredients to be able to follow this recipe:

• 1 cup of broth – This broth can either be chicken or vegetable.
• 1 diced medium onion – It is up to you whether you use a white or yellow onion.
• 2 x 28 ounce cans of peeled San Marzano tomatoes.
• 4 cloves of garlic (minced).
• ½ cup of coconut milk.
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil.
• 1 tablespoon of honey.
• ¼ cup of fresh basil.
• 1 teaspoon of dried oregano.
• 2 teaspoons of salt.
• ¼ teaspoon of red pepper flakes.
• ½ teaspoon of pepper.
• Parmesan cheese – This is an optional extra to add to the top of your soup once you are ready to eat.

Tools You’ll Need For This Recipe

Tomato soup and grilled cheese is a fairly straightforward recipe to follow. While it uses basic ingredients, it also doesn’t require any technical or complex tools either.

Before you begin making anything, once you have collected your ingredients, you need to ensure that you have the following tools to help you to complete this recipe.

You will need to collect the following tools outline bellowed:

• Large Dutch Oven
• Wooden Spoon
• Large Skillet
• Spatula
• Immersion Blender

Grilled Cheese And Tomato Soup Steps

With this recipe, you will start off making the tomato soup first, and then once the soup is complete, that is when you can start making your grilled cheese.

Step 1: Create Your Soup Base

Warm up the olive oil in a large Dutch oven. The onions should be added once the oil is hot. Then cook the onions for about five minutes while stirring occasionally.

After this point, you can add your minced garlic and cook for a further minute.

Step 2: Make The Soup Creamy

Now that the base is created, you can add your coconut milk, tomatoes, and broth to the Dutch oven. Stir everything together, until it is all blended together.

Then you can season the soup to your taste, by adding the red pepper flakes, honey, fresh basil, oregano, salt, and pepper.

Once again, mix everything together, and give the soup the taste. You can add more or less of these seasonings until you are happy with how the soup is tasting.

Step 3: Bring To The Boil And Simmer

With all the ingredients added, it is time to bring the soup up to the boil. Once you have reached a rolling boil, then you need to reduce the heat so that it is a low and gentle simmer.

Simmer your soup for around 20 minutes. After this time, turn the heat off and allow your soup to rest for up to 10 minutes.

Step 4: Blend The Soup

Using any type of blender that you have, whether that is an immersion blender, food processor or regular blender. Blend your soup until it has a smooth consistency.

While we are recommending a smooth consistency, if you do like your soup to be more lumpy, then you just need to stop blending a bit sooner.

Once you are happy with the consistency of the soup, you need to pour it back into your pot. This soup is ready to be served.

Step 5: Create Your Grilled Cheese

Now that your soup is complete, you create your grilled cheese sandwiches.

Butter one side of each slice of bread for the grilled cheese sandwich.

A skillet should be heated to medium-high. Then place the cheese on top of the un-buttered side of your bread. Put your bread, butter side down, inside the heated skillet and add a lid to the pan.

Add the second piece of bread and butter on top of the cheese after about two minutes. Put the lid back on the skillet and cook for an additional two minutes.

Cook for a further 2 to 3 minutes on the opposite side, or until both sides are golden brown.

Step 6: Serve

Once both sides of the grilled cheese are brown, then you can remove this from the pan, slice in half and serve.

When you are serving your tomato soup, you can add a sprinkle of grated Parmesan cheese, to add a tang flavor.

How Many People Will This Recipe Serve?

For the tomato soup, it will serve around 8 people. However, there still should be some leftovers, which you can enjoy the day after as well. When it comes to the grilled cheese, the recipe will create four sandwiches.

Both the tomato soup and grilled cheese recipes can be modified to serve the right amount of people.

Creating Grilled Cheese For A Crowd

If you find yourself making grilled cheese for more than two people and wish to get them all cooked quickly, then a skillet may not be the easiest method to follow.

While you could make each grilled cheese to order, this will take far too much time.

The simplest way to make grilled cheese for a crowd is to use an oven.

With this technique, you can prepare a lot of sandwiches all at once. Set the oven’s temperature to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. As stated in the recipe above, assemble the sandwiches on a baking sheet.

They should be baked for approximately 6 minutes on each side, or until golden brown.

If they are still not brown after this time period, then you should flip the sandwiches over every couple of minutes until they are golden brown.

However, you can still make grilled cheese in a skillet. Then you can use the oven to keep the sandwich warm until they are ready to be served with the tomato soup.

Set the oven to 250 degrees Fahrenheit, then once each sandwich is cooked, wrap them in foil and place them in the oven to stay warm.

When you are ready to eat, the grilled cheese will still be warm and the cheese will still be melted.

Can You Make This Recipe Dairy Free?

There’s a way to make this recipe dairy free, however, it may not have the exact same flavors.

The tomato soup itself is already dairy free, since coconut milk is used instead of regular dairy milk.

The coconut milk helps to provide the soup with a much thicker and creamier texture (Also check out Tom Kha Soup – How To Make Authentic Thai Coconut Soup). You can omit the milk altogether and add water instead, but you won’t achieve the same thick texture.

In addition to this, to make the soup completely dairy free, you should also skip the final step where Parmesan cheese is added on top as well.

When it comes to the grilled cheese, you can make it dairy free by using a dairy free cheese substitute.

Although, you need to be aware that not all dairy free cheese alternatives will melt the same way that normal cheese does.

In this case, you may wish to make a completely different kind of grilled sandwich to go with your tomato soup.

What Should You Serve With Grilled Cheese And Tomato Soup?

For most people, grilled cheese and tomato soup is a substantial meal by itself, and you don’t need to serve it with anything else.

However, you may wish to add some grilled vegetables to enjoy alongside the soup and sandwich.

You could also add a side salad of your choice as well. Also, since this soup is quite savory, why not balance the flavors out and add a sweet element.

This could be like a sweet apricot jam you add on top or some fruit. Hence, there are a lot of possibilities that you can enjoy with your grilled cheese and tomato soup.

Storing Any Leftovers

You will want to make a big batch of this tomato soup that you can freeze or keep in the fridge to have on standby.

We wouldn’t recommend storing any grilled cheese leftovers as they won’t have the same texture when reheated. Thus, it is always better to make your grilled cheese fresh each time you want one.

With that being said, you can store any tomato soup leftovers either in the fridge or freezer.

Storing In The Fridge

This soup can be made in advance and stored in the fridge for up to three days. It is important that the soup is kept in a container that has a lid, as this will prevent a film being created on the top of the soup.

Once you are ready to consume the soup, you just need to reheat the soup on a medium heat on the stove. This should only take a couple of minutes until it can be served.

Storing In The Freezer

If you want to always have some of this tomato soup on hand, then you could always freeze it.

You just need to follow the recipe as usual and then allow the soup to cool down slightly. It should be at room temperature and then transferred to secure containers. This could be a freezer safe jar or freezer safe bags that have a strong seal.

This tomato soup can be stored in the freezer for up to four months. Once you are ready to have the soup, then you must allow it to completely defrost. Then you can reheat the soup on medium heat on the stove.

Tips And Advice To Follow

Everyone should have their own perfect tomato soup and grilled cheese recipe. The best thing about this recipe is that it uses simple pantry ingredients and takes under an hour to complete.

To help you to create the best grilled cheese and tomato soup combo, we have collected together the best tips and advice that you should keep in mind.

Consider Fire Roasted Tomatoes

You can use any cans of tomatoes to be able to make this tomato soup. However, if you want to obtain the best favor, then we would highly recommend using fired roasted cans of tomatoes. The tomatoes are roasted over a flame and then canned.

By cooking the tomatoes this way, this gives them a much sweeter flavor. In addition to this, this type of tomato will cook down a lot quicker. Therefore, your soup will require much less simmering time.

Add Multiple Cheeses

When you are making your grilled cheese, you don’t have to stick with one type of cheese. You can add multiple different cheeses to create a really complex flavor profile.

Why not try cheddar cheese with smoked Gouda. You will be surprised how well the smoky flavor of the Gouda elevates the grilled cheese.

Check Your Seasoning

It is important that you taste your tomato soup as it is being cooked, especially once you have added all the seasonings.

If you like the flavor of a certain seasoning more than another, then you may wish to add more of that particular seasoning.

However, you need to taste check your soup to ensure that a particular seasoning isn’t dominating the soup. There should be an even balance of flavors.

Shred Your Cheese

While you could add thin slices of cheese to make your grilled cheese, we would advise that you shred your cheese instead.

By shredding your cheese, you ensure that it will all melt at the same time and much quicker. In addition to this, this will help you to create the gooiest interior possible.

Always Use Fresh Basil

While it may be easier to get dried basil, fresh basil is much better in this recipe. It gives the soup a great burst of flavor, which you won’t achieve with dried basil.

With your sprinkle of Parmesan cheese on top, you could also add some more chopped fresh basil to really ensure that this herb has its moment to shine.

Add Cream

If you don’t enjoy the flavor of coconut milk, then like we mentioned above, you could omit this and use water instead.

However, if you still want to create a thick texture and creamy flavor, then you could always add some heavy cream to your soup after it has been blended.

Adding creaming to your tomato soup is a more traditional way to make tomato soup

Be Patient

When creating both the tomato soup and grilled cheese, you need to remember to be patient.

The tomato soup doesn’t require a lot of work, but you need to ensure that you allow the soup for the correct amount of simmering time.

This will allow the flavors to infuse properly, and a real depth will be created as a result.

Furthermore, you need to have patience with your grilled cheese. Especially, as you want to ensure that all the cheese is properly melted, especially in the middle.

This will create a much more enjoyable texture for you to eat if all the cheese has been melted properly. This is why we say you should also shred your cheese to allow it to melt quicker and more evenly.

Final Thoughts

Grilled cheese and tomato soup is a very well known and popular combination to enjoy for lunch or dinner. It consists of very basic ingredients to create a really complex and flavorful meal.

Anyone can follow the recipe we have outlined above to create this mouthing dish. In addition, you can easily customize this recipe to suit your dietary requirement or taste.

You can even make large batches to freeze to ensure you always have some tomato soup on hand.

We hope you have found this article helpful. By following all the steps and tips we have spoken about, you will be able to impress your friends and family.

The time you see them, serve them your own homemade grilled cheese and bowl of tomato soup.

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