Tuesday, October 28, 2008

UNSUCCESSFUL

So remember I was going to make some tomato soup last night? I failed. Twice.

Here's the recipe I was using. It's supposed to be Panera Bread's recipe for their delicious creamy tomato soup:

5 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup chopped onion
4 tablespoons flour
4 cups milk
1/2 bay leaf
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3 cups tomatoes, chopped (fresh or canned)

•Melt the Butter in a soup pot.
Add the onion and cook over medium heat, stirring, until the onion is softened but not browned.
•Sprinkle the flour over the butter mixture and continue to stir and cook for 1 to 2 minutes.
•Slowly add the milk, bay leaf, sugar, and salt and continue to cook and stir until slightly thickened.
•Stir the baking soda into the tomatoes.
•Add the tomatoes to the milk, and bring just to a simmer.
•Remove from the heat and put through a strainer.
•Taste and correct seasonings.
•Reheat before serving.

So the first attempt, I melted the butter. As you can see, I skipped the onion step because I don't like onions. So I went to add my flour. Only I was reading the milk line and started to add four cups of flour. I quickly realized that was not right. I'd only tossed in one cup and it was way too much. So I poured the doughy mix out (more like scooped it out), washed the pot and started again.

Butter, flour, milk, bay leaf, salt, sugar, everything was getting thick and going well. I added the tomatoes and it became colorful and frothy. I let it simmer before I strained it, which is when things went wrong. Basically, I was left with a bowlful of pink milk, with a film of butter on the top. I couldn't even look at it, much less eat it, so I poured it down the sink and found something else to eat for dinner.

Where did I go wrong? Did I not cook the milk enough? How thick should it have gotten before I added the tomatoes?

Looks like I'm back to scrambling eggs for now.

6 comments:

  1. the onions probably would have soaked up some of that butter ...

    ReplyDelete
  2. When you didn't buy Campbell's tomato soup.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ok, you should cook the butter and flour until its a light light brown color. Then, wisk in the milk until the flour/butter combo disolves. Then add your other ingrediants. In order for the soup to actually thicken, you have to let the milk come to a boil, otherwise it will always be pink milk. Also, you should probably use tomato sauce instead of chopped tomatoes. That way you don't have to worry about straining it. Since you're eating soup, I would use a high quality tomato sauce. They have sauces from Italy in the regular grocery store now and they're not that expensive. Hope this helps!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thank you Startha Stewart.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ditto Wes. Campbell's is what? Under a buck?

    I do applaud your passion!

    I have no clue. Your talking to the kid who had a protein shake and pile of deli meat for dinner tonight. That sounds like a lot of butter though. I thought tomato soup was supposed to be on the healthier side.

    ReplyDelete
  6. LJ, don't you know that it's easiest to just buy your favorite dish?? I thought you learned that in our attempt at making Carrabba's Chicken Bryan?!

    ReplyDelete

Oh goody!

wordpress blog stats