Not Your Average Tomato Soup

I know it seems weird to make a soup during the warmer months, but I think I'm a proponent of soup in the summer. This is a summer soup. Hey, it's Eric Kim. I'm a food columnist for the New York Times, and today we're gonna make my brothy tomato rice soup. I love this soup because it sort of represents, for me, tomato season. It's not like a tomato soup or the tomatoes pureed. It's a tomato soup that really captures the essence and flavor of fresh, vine-ripened tomatoes because we're gonna use the vines. Do not ingest them, but if you use them as almost like a steeping ingredient, I kind of think of it like tea. The tomato flavor you get is astronomical. There's a little jasmine rice, which itself lends this great aroma. Obviously, we're doing huge basil leaves at the end to amplify the tomato flavor as well. It's a really aromatic experience. It really immerses you in the once-a-year joy that is tomato season. The stems and leaves and unripe fruits of tomato plants contain tomatine, a toxic alkaloid. There are some people out there who have a greater sensitivity to this, so if you do, just skip the vines. It's fine. It's just one of those ideas that can help you get to a very tomato-y end product. Soup is so chill. The way I like to make soup is to really layer in flavor, making sure to get the most out of my ingredients because these aren't that many ingredients. All we have is a little olive oil. I'm just gonna add a teeny bit just to get the guanciale started. We have guanciale, which we're gonna saute until nice and rendered and really bubbly. Guanciale is pork jowl. It's cured. It's not smoked. So it has a bacon-y vibe, but not as smoky. In fact, if I were to use bacon, it would give a really lovely smoky flavor to the end result. You could add a pinch of paprika here if you wanted that flavor, but right now we're trying to just render it, which just means melting the fat. It takes five minutes. Smoking a little bit. Just means that we're really getting there. So it's done when it kind of looks like fried spam. This is mostly fat, but you're getting some nice browning. I'm gonna drain it a little bit because I don't need to eat all of this, but I need enough to fry the onion. Not too much onion, like half of a medium onion. Season with a little salt just to get the onion to break down faster. Draw out the moisture. We're just trying to cook this down now. We're building a base. We're waiting for the onion to be more translucent. The next step is blooming the spices that are gonna go in. Reduce the heat. I'm just scooting it to the side. You know that leftover guanciale fat that I kind of took out earlier? I'm gonna use it now to bloom the spices. So in here is gonna go a teaspoon of dried oregano. Kind of crush it between your fingers to release the oils. That's what Ina Garten taught me. Not directly, but just from her videos. And then red chili flake. I like it pretty spicy. We're blooming the spices and herbs so that they kind of wake up flavor-wise, but we're also seasoning the oil. Without this step, it'll still taste great, but it's such a simple thing that gets you a lot of results. Okay, that's good. It's only a few seconds of that. I'm actually gonna now sort of like nestle in the tomatoes. And this isn't that important, but I do kind of just try to like get them in contact with the pan. I just want it to get going. Just like a minute here. I'm at like medium-low. So as that juice kind of comes out, it's sputtering with the oil, and that's why we hear this sizzling sound. I'm gonna add the jasmine rice now. You only need a quarter cup. It's a little bit. And jasmine rice is so fragrant. I just love the smell of it, the scent. Go in broth. It'll bubble up immediately. And then we just simmer it in that soup. I might like zhuzh it around a little bit. There's not gonna be that many things to scrape off the bottom, but I mean, we're basically almost there now. We're just gonna bring this to a boil over high, and then I'm gonna reduce it and simmer it for about like 15 to 20 minutes, just until the rice is cooked, and the tomatoes will sort of pop. And the vines are gonna do their job. They're gonna make the broth aromatic. If you were to use a pot that was a different size or shape, the vines maybe would not be as submerged. In that case, you can flip them over so the tomatoes on top and then the vines on the bottom. If I cover the pot, then the liquid stays in here to control the moisture and control the evaporation. Just making sure it's not a simmer. Do that for like 15 minutes. It's actually been about like 17 or so minutes. We're gonna check our soup. The tomatoes have popped a little bit. Some of them have burst, and some of them have become just like little slips of skins, which means that some of their fruit has melted into the broth, adding a lot of savoriness. The onions have all floated to the top. The rice is done. I'm gonna do a little taste for seasoning. I think this needs some salt. What I'm also tasting is the nice savoriness that we've built. Do what makes you happy. It's a very like nourishing soup. This is the final touch. A little dribble of sesame oil, toasted sesame oil at the end. Gives you a nice flavor of a floppy basil moment. Very picky about this. One thing I really love about this soup is that the basil kind of mimics tomato leaves. It's just such a nice experience. It's so luxurious. I'm tasting many layers of flavor that culminate in something that's really dynamic, but also gentle, because it's a soup. There's nuttiness from the sesame oil. There is floral basil aroma. There's also nourishing rice between bites of the broth, and the tomato lends so much umami and acid. And the salt is really important because it really brings out all those flavors. And it's decidedly tomatoey. It's not like a pureed tomato soup that you would have with grilled cheese, though a grilled cheese would be great with this. I really like this because it shows you the power of water and simmering. You might be wondering, how the heck do you eat the tomatoes? I don't know, just eat them. Go forth, make your brothy tomato rice soup. I hope you really get to celebrate tomato season and celebrate the plant in its entirety. The vines do a lot more than you think. For this recipe and many more, you can go to nytcooking.com.