Pressure Cooked Tomato Soup for the win

pressure cooker inventory + chickpea egg salad grilled cheese sandwich

Tomato soup is so easy, so comforting, and so very tasty. I wonder why I don’t make it more often.

And I wonder if you ask yourself that same question?

I had been on a long streak of eating Indian dishes (like chicken meatballs in creamy onion sauce, lemon rice, pav bhaji). I really needed a break from these loud North Indian flavors.

My palate was craving something more simple, refreshing, and effortless.

Around 6:30pm I rummaged around in my fridge and saw I had the usual suspects - tomatoes, carrots, onions - but was wracking my brains on what really to do with them. Around 6:37pm I had my aha moment: tomato soup.

I love tomato soup. It’s warm, it’s comforting, it’s versatile for when you’re feeling cold or sick or giddy or elated or what not. When traveling, it’s one of the safer options in an airport in terms of taste and health, hard to mess up. When in a generic cafeteria, tomato soup is usually the least likely dish to disappoint. It pairs amazingly with oooyey gooyey cheesey sandwiches.

So why don’t I make it more often? I think I just somehow forgot about this dish, perhaps it felt too simple for my free style kitchen experiments. I’m glad my aha moment revealed the humble tomato soup for dinner this night.

However, I was running out of time. Dinner is usually around 7pm in my house and at 6:40pm I had only taken the ingredients out of the fridge. How would I make this fast? What cooks things fast? Thankfully, a pressure cooker!

Since I hail from an Indian family, I have collected multiple pressure cookers over the years. In fact, most of them are the traditional kinds that whistle to release pressure. And therefore scary for newbies. I currently own a 5L Hawkins that I bought over a decade ago, a 2.5L Vinod that my MIL gifted me recently, and a 1.5L Hawkins that I rescued from a friend who wanted to throw it away. I have had my eye on a 3.5L mid-size version but I haven’t been able to convince myself to purchase them considering I also own the modern Instant pot. A pressure cooker whistling away reminds me of my childhood where I would play in the front yard and my mom would be cooking delicious things. The audible whistle always startled us but then promised us good things and happy bellies.

So it was only natural that I would use my 2.5L pressure cooker to make this tomato soup as fast as possible. I sautéed red onions in olive oil on medium heat, added the tomatoes, carrots, garlic, cashews (for creaminess), dried oregano & thyme, salt, and black pepper. I noticed fresh basil growing on my windowsill and cut a couple sprigs to toss into the soup. I added water enough to cover all the ingredients and closed the lid. On medium heat, the pressure took ~6-7 mins to build up releasing in 1 whistle (this would be equivalent to ~3-4 mins of pressure on an Instant Pot). I turned off the heat and let half the pressure release naturally (~7-8 mins) and vented the remaining pressure (I got impatient).

All the ingredients had softened well. I added some butter and some milk (for more creaminess, omit for a vegan version) and then blended using an immersion blender (or toss it into a regular blender if that’s what you have). The result was quite a creamy soup, for which the only thing I had to adjust was the salt.

By 7:08pm I had the soup ready. In the meantime my husband had prepared grilled cheese sandwich with a filling made of mashed chickpea and boiled eggs (which I had cooked the previous day). I served this with a splash of high quality flavorful California olive oil and a sprinkle of dried parsley.

This tomato soup was so so good. It was soulful food. Each bite was simple yet luxurious. The tanginess from the tomatoes, the earthiness from the dried herbs, the freshness from the basil, the contrast from the olive oil, all worked together to warm up our hearts and bellies on a cold winter night. We smiled away as we dipped our grilled cheese sandwiches into this silky soup, sometimes happily ending up with tomato soup mustaches.

I have free styled many soups into tasty slurps of joy that you may enjoy: an upgraded potato leek soup that is hearty, a butternut squash tofu soup to boost protein content, miso kimchi gochujang soup for when you are sick, a beet based blood soup for the vampires, and a lentil spinach soup that is a staple in my kitchen.

Dish Debrief

• Is this my winner or disaster? winner

• How would I rate this dish out of 10? 10/10

• What would I change next time? It’s already so good!

• Would I make this again? YES!