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
How To Make The Easiest Tomato Soup From Scratch
This simple homemade tomato soup is quick, easy, and insanely delicious. It is excellent with canned tomatoes, but you can also use fresh tomatoes. Tips for canned and fresh tomatoes are found in the recipe below. If you love quick, no-fuss recipes, this is it!
This tomato 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.
We love serving this with a grilled cheese sandwich, but a slice of this rosemary focaccia bread is also an excellent idea!
Making The 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.
Watch our video above and 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 topped with homemade croutons or served next to this easy buttery garlic bread.
What Tomatoes Should I Use
This soup is excellent with canned tomatoes. Just like when making our favorite red pasta sauce, 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
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I make this tomato soup vegan? Yes, olive oil or a plant-based butter is an option. You can also use coconut oil. It might sound odd but the light coconut flavor with onion/tomatoes is pretty delicious.
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.
Can I add cream? Yes, although, with the butter in this recipe, only a small splash of cream is needed.
Can I make this soup in advance? Yes! Store homemade tomato soup in an airtight container in the fridge for up to three days or freeze up to three months.
More Easy Soup Recipes
We have many soup recipes on Inspired Taste. Here are a few favorites:
For more tomato-based soups, take a look at our chilled tomato soup recipe (Gazpacho) or this roasted tomato sop with lemon.
I love creamy soups. Two of the most popular creamy soups on the blog are this easy creamy veggie soup and this simple homemade potato soup.
Homemade broths add so much to soups. Here’s our recipe for homemade vegetable broth as well as our favorite recipe for chicken broth.
While we are on the subject of chicken, you must take a look at our easy homemade chicken noodle soup recipe. It is healthy, satisfying, and tastes incredible. It’s faster to make than the traditional version, too!
I love this lightened up broccoli cheddar soup! It’s creamy and so delicious.
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
Watch Us Make the Recipe
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 ½ 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 make this vegan? Yes, olive oil is an option or coconut oil instead of butter. Coconut oil might sound odd but the light coconut flavor with onion/tomatoes is pretty delicious.
- 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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This soup is awesome! I added a whole cove of garlic in with the onions and stirred a handful of Parmesan cheese in at the end. Sooooo good
Cooked as directed! The whole family loved it. Will definitely make again.
Super delicious and incredibly easy to make. Will definitely be added to my list of regular recipes
I would like to can this soup. Do you have a recipe for that? Thank you.
We don’t have a recipe for canning. There are tons of websites dedicated to canning that would be able to help you.
Can this soup be frozen?
I was wondering how many number 10 cans of diced tomatoes would I need to make your recipe for feeding a lot of people
Why should you use canned tomatoes instead of fresh tomatoes? Just because of the ease of not having to remove the skins? I have a ton of fresh tomatoes and is the reason I ask.
We like using fresh tomatoes but we don’t always have good ones on hand. Both versions taste delicious.
Great idea to use the blender on the soup. I’m going to use that for my other soups to get more in the thermos that I take to work. Less bulk. More food. Same space.
Can you add potatoes to this
Yes, that sounds lovely 🙂
This soup is delicious!!! I will never buy canned tomato soup again! I made it with fresh tomatoes! You won’t be disappointed! Yummy !!!
I loved this! I didn’t have butter so used vegan margarine like spread instead. I already had half a red onion in the fridge so I used it instead of yellow. And because I was in a rush and I saw that you blended it at the end anyway, I just popped all of the ingredients into my Vitamix and pressed the soup setting and had soup in about 5 minutes. It was divine. I usually have more time than I did today so I will definitely be making this in the future on the stove top as directed as well!! Vitamix soups are fine when I’m in a pinch buy info prefer to let a soup simmer as per usual. Merci beaucoup!!
This soup was amazing! I ended up blending the soup in vitamin for a smooth texture. Thank you so much for this recipe !!
The recipe was simple and delicious. Thank you so much. For my husband, who is not really a lover of tomato soup, he and my kid’s, really enjoyed it. I did most of all.
I love this recipe and I have made it several times. It should come with a warning though. After eating this I can no longer tolerate any canned tomato soup and I once loved it. Now canned tomato soup is just intolerable. I use San Marzano tomatoes and double the recipe. I always add some lemon juice, white pepper and cream to the mixture. I use the emersion blender and blend it smooth because we like it super smooth. We serve it with shredded mozzarella cheese and croutons which is amazing. It is so much fun to make. I am so grateful for this recipe. This recipe is genius and lends itself well to variations and individual tweaks. Tonight I made it for my husband and we are both sick with Covid and the cupboard was a bit bare. It was so easy and so comforting. Thank you so much for sharing.
Fabulous soup! just so simple but so delicious! Thank you.