Spicy Tomato Mushroom Soup
Come for the cozy recipe, stay for the guilt-free Thanksgiving leftover trick.
The ingredients:
3 pounds roma tomatoes, halved
1 head garlic
1/2 c mushrooms, halved
3 tbsp olive oil
3 slices bacon, diced
2 tbsp butter
1/2 yellow onion, diced
2 tbsp crushed red pepper flakes
2 tsp salt
2 tbsp black pepper
4 c stock of choice (for this, I used homemade turkey stock: see below)
The process:
Arrange tomatoes and mushrooms on a roasting pan and drizzle with olive oil. Cut hat off head of garlic and wrap in foil. Cover top of head with olive oil and place on pan. Roast at 450 for 30 minutes. While roasting, cook diced bacon in bottom of dutch oven or deep pot. Remove bacon bits and reserve. Once bacon fat has rendered, add in yellow onion and butter and cook until translucent. Add in red pepper flakes, salt, and black pepper. Once oven ingredients have roasted, put all into the dutch oven. Squeeze cloves out of the roasted garlic head. Mash together and add in stock. Blend all together with immersion blender. For a creamier soup, add in a quarter cup of heavy whipping cream. Top with croutons and bacon.
The story:
If I can be honest—and I feel like this is an honest space—I don’t like leftovers. I think it’s because we used to have leftovers a lot growing up, and I feel like it made food seem like a chore. Food is supposed to be fun! And exciting! And not indicative that, fiscally, it’s more responsible to eat whatever is in the butter container at the back of the fridge instead of throwing it out. Not trying to say my mom made me eat moldy ham or anything, but playing that visual game of “is this lumpy mashed potatoes or macaroni and cheese” isn’t something that conjures up warm memories of childhood. My favorite meals are when it felt like we were creating something fresh, you know?
The solution to the leftover conundrum, I suppose, is to cook less. But that leads us to Thanksgiving, where it’s a sport to cook the most. What do you do with it all? The popular answer is Thanksgiving sandwiches, which are delicious and unimpeachable. But when the allure wears off, my trick to a guilt-free, post-Thanksgiving season is all about the turkey carcass. What I do is throw the turkey bones, the aromatics inside the turkey, and even a healthy amount of the drippings into a dutch oven with about nine or ten cups of water. Bring it to a boil, then let it simmer for at least an hour (preferably two or three). Boom, stock. You can freeze the majority of it, but in the immediate future, you can have the best of both worlds: something new and leftover.
I think that’s where the true test of your turkey comes in because the stock that remains when you run it through a sieve is a testament to your Thanksgiving centerpiece. It’s going to taste no more bland or flavorful than your turkey, so you’re putting your cards on the table. But if you’re like me and my turkey (salt-brined, full of lemon and onion and thyme and rosemary, and covered in a chive-garlic compound butter) then you’re going to have one hell of a base for a soup, which is why my post-Thanksgiving tomato mushroom soup hits so hard.
And listen. Shoutout to all the moms with Country Crock containers full of stuffing or cranberry sauce. We salute you. But for this upcoming generation, aim to cook less, reduce food waste, and store things that are (arguably) better than the original product. The Monday night leftover blues will thank you and so will your wallet.