Easy Three-Ingredient Tomato Soup
My favorite tomato soup recipe! You wouldn’t think that three ingredients — butter, onion, and tomato — can come together to make such a velvety and delicious tomato soup, but let me tell you. They can. Jump to the Tomato Soup Recipe or watch our quick recipe video showing how to make it.
Watch How We Make Tomato Soup
How To Make The Easiest 3-Ingredient Tomato Soup From Scratch
This simple homemade tomato soup is quick, easy, and insanely delicious.
The soup is inspired by one of the most famous recipes out there — Marcella Hazan’s Tomato Sauce. Butter, tomatoes, and onion are simmered until slightly thickened. Out comes the onion and the sauce is ready to be spooned over pasta.
It’s genius and absolutely delicious. We use the same three ingredients in this tomato soup, but add a little water and blend everything together just before serving.
Making The Tomato Soup
Here’s how to the best (and easiest) tomato soup
Add water or broth and simmer. Bring everything to a low simmer, add some salt and leave it alone for about 40 minutes. See how creamy it gets? That’s thanks to the butter.
Blend. I find an immersion blender is useful, but a blender works, too. Adjust the soup for seasoning then grab a bowl…and maybe a grilled cheese sandwich? This soup is also amazing served next to this easy buttery garlic bread.
What Tomatoes Should I Use
This tomato soup is excellent with canned tomatoes. I love using whole peeled tomatoes or crushed tomatoes. By the way, we love San Marzano Tomatoes and are always pleased with tomatoes from Muir Glen. Neither are watery and both taste great.
You can also use fresh tomatoes. You will need 10 to 12 whole tomatoes (or about 2 pounds). It’s best to peel them, but we have made the soup with unpeeled tomatoes.
A Quick Recap
This is your new favorite weeknight meal. Promise.
- This tomato soup has three ingredients (plus water and salt).
- Everything is tossed into a pan — no browning, no hovering over a stove.
- You can use canned tomatoes — and should.
- Did I mention there are only three ingredients?
What Our Readers Are Saying
If you don’t believe that our recipe helps you achieve perfect tomato soup at home, take a look at what our readers are saying about the recipe! More reviews are in the comments section below.
“WOW!! What a delicious and easy tomato soup, my three and one-year old were as thrilled as my husband and I were.” – Ashley
“This is the best tomato soup, hands down!! Cannot say that emphatically enough. Did not change a thing from the recipe and it was perfect. Couldn’t be easier to make.” – John
“Made this exactly as written. Oh my gosh, this was amazing!!!” – Dayna
More Easy Soup Recipes
- You might also want to take a peek at our chilled tomato soup recipe (Gazpacho)
- Try this Incredibly Easy and Creamy Vegetable Soup Recipe. It’s one of our absolute favorites and something we make often.
- A wonderful recipe for homemade vegetable broth — It’s ultra-satisfying!
- Or, for something a little different, our roasted tomato soup with lemon and thyme.
- This easy homemade chicken noodle soup recipe is healthy, satisfying, and tastes incredible. It’s faster to make than the traditional version, too!
Recipe updated, originally posted October 2015. Since posting this in 2015, we have tweaked the recipe to be more clear and added a quick recipe video. – Adam and Joanne
Easy Three-Ingredient Tomato Soup
- PREP
You only need three main ingredients to make this velvety, rich tomato soup recipe. This, friends is your new favorite weeknight meal.
Makes 2 generous servings
You Will Need
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 large onion, cut into large wedges
1 (28-ounce) can tomatoes, we prefer to use whole peeled or crushed, see notes for fresh tomatoes
1 1/2 cups water, low sodium vegetable stock, or chicken stock
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt, or more to taste
Directions
Melt butter over medium heat in a Dutch oven or large saucepan.
Add onion wedges, water, can of tomatoes with their juices, and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Bring to a simmer. Cook, uncovered, for about 40 minutes. Stir occasionally and add additional salt as needed.
Blend the soup, and then season to taste. The soup doesn’t need to be ultra-smooth, some texture is a nice touch. An immersion blender does make quick work of this, or you can use a blender. If you use a regular blender, it is best to blend in batches and not fill the blender as much as you usually would since the soup is so hot. We like to remove the center insert of the lid and cover it with a kitchen towel while blending — this helps to release some of the steam and prevents the blender lid from popping off (which can be a big, hot mess).
Adam and Joanne's Tips
- Can I use fresh tomatoes? Yes. If you want to use fresh tomatoes, you will need 10 to 12 medium tomatoes (or about 2 pounds). You can peel them, but we skip this step since we will be blending the soup in the end anyway.
- Can I add basil? This soup is delicious with and without basil. Adding a handful of fresh basil at the end before blending the soup is a fantastic idea.
- Nutrition facts: The nutrition facts provided below are estimates. We have used the USDA Supertracker recipe calculator to calculate approximate values. We have omitted salt since you will need to add to your tastes.
If you make this recipe, snap a photo and hashtag it #inspiredtaste — We love to see your creations on Instagram and Facebook! Find us: @inspiredtaste
Nutrition Per Serving: Serving Size Half of the recipe / Calories 348 / Total Fat 24.9g / Saturated Fat 14.8g / Cholesterol 61mg / Sodium 1485.4mg / Carbohydrate 29.6g / Dietary Fiber 4.5g / Total Sugars 15.4g / Protein 7.8g
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Very nice lunch, quick easy, wife normally not a tomato soup fan but liked this. Going to be go to thanks.
Can the recipe be doubled
Yes, absolutely.
This was delicious! I made a big double batch with approx 4 pounds of fresh Roma tomatoes. I blended them before cooking so I wouldn’t have to worry about working with hot liquid. Thank you so much for this yummy recipe. I’ll be making it a lot in the future!
We had an abundance of banana peppers in the garden so we roasted those and added them to the soup. We also added a few carrots that we shredded to add some sweetness.
This was a very easy soup to make, especially after a long day at work! I made grilled cheese sandwiches, topped the soup with fresh basil, freshly ground black pepper and chili flakes. So good!!! It’s definitely in our monthly menu plan rotation…
seriously good and hearty soup.Thanks for the share. I Halved the recipe. It’s only me and my cat and she doesn’t eat tomato soup. lol…I changed it up a bit. Added some garlic and about a tablespoon of grated carrot. Yummy!
I’m 13 and I’m making this, this is so good! My family loved it and it was so simple and easy to make! 5/5! Totally recommend it with grilled cheese for dipping ^^
Could you use plant based milk instead of water or vegetable stock.
Hi Edie, That’s a great question. I think you could, which would make the soup extra creamy. That said, we have never tested this, so it’s hard to say exactly what will happen without trying it out first for ourselves. If you do try it, let us know how it goes 🙂
This soup recipe is so handy! I tried this yesterday with some variations (since I did not have some of the ingredients handy). I used fresh unpeeled tomatoes, added a spoon of tomato ketchup and left off the vegetable stock. As for blending, I used my blender and sieved up the soup, and then took the pulp and put it in the grinder and sieved again. This made the soup thicker and brought back the texture. Your simple recipe gave me the courage to try making soup from scratch for the first time – thanks!
Are you able to freeze this soup after it is made? I’m the only one in my house that eats it so I want to make sure that it doesnt go to waste.
Hi Heather, freezing the soup is a great idea!
Thank you so much for this simple and delicious recipe. I have always loved tomato soup but I couldn’t tolerate the canned version and the thought of making it seemed daunting. But your 3 ingredient recipe is perfect!
Looking forward to making the tomato soup but was wondering if you can recommend a couple of decent not too expensive immersion blenders. Thanks!
Hi Sharon, We have not tried many brands, so it’s hard to compare, but we love Cuisinart and KitchenAid, which both have a few options that under $40.
My wife loves tomato soup, so we made this one and it was great. We will do this again thanks.
This tomato soup is amazing! I’m wondering if it would be okay to can if using fresh tomatoes. Maybe add a little lemon juice before to kick up the acid level?
Fresh tomatoes are amazing in this soup. When we’ve made it with fresh tomatoes, we have not found the need to add any additional ingredients, but a spritz of lemon in tomato sounds amazing, anyway.