Bottled sunshine, that’s what this is. I make and preserve this soup in late summer/early autumn when tomatoes are sweet, plentiful and cheap. Better still if you can grow your own. A perfect lunch on a cold winter day served with cheese toasties.
To make it worth your while (and it is definitely worth it) you’ll need first off 6kg ripe tomatoes, 4 medium onions, 2-3 stalks celery. Chop up roughly, add a little bag of pickling spices and boil for about 45 minutes
Now you can either strain through a sieve or use a food mouili like I do. If you use a sieve you get a much smoother result as most of the fibre cannot pass through the sieve. If you use a mouilli you get about a third more soup.
Put the sieved veges back on the heat and add ? tsp white pepper, 2 Tbs sugar, 1 desertspoon common (not iodised) salt and 250gm butter. Bring to the boil and boil it hard for about 5 minutes.
It’s now ready to bottle. If you use a mouilli you will need to increase the amount of sugar, salt, butter and pepper by another half.?
Remove the pickling spices before pouring into hot jars and sealing using the overflow method.