I love meal prepping. Having grown up in the Netherlands and eating bread for lunch for the majority of my life, I am kind of bread-tired. That is why I love making big batches of food for the week, taking lunches into work/school every day. Since it is winter, I thought I would make a lovely warming soup and test it out during a lunch with friends and I have to say; it was a hit! This slow roasted tomato soup is warming, delicious and herby. It is packed full of vegetables and doesn’t require any fancy ingredients. I do however need to say, it is SLOW-roasted, so don’t expect a quick soup here ;).

I absolutely love cooking with fresh herbs and the advantage of using thyme is that you can actually freeze it at home. I know, that sounds like a contradiction, freezing fresh herbs, but it works really well. In the summer I like to buy plants rather than packets of fresh herbs, but right now I would not be sure they survive well.

This soup can be made into a regular or creamy tomato soup by omitting or adding some (soya) creamer. For an at-home-lunch I like to keep it plain and swirl some creamer into each bowl and top it off with some freshly cut basil. However, for a meal prep, I like to add the creamer when blending, but it is up to you!

Ingredients for 5-6 servings:

• 1.5 kg of tomatoes
• A splash of olive oil or olive oil spray
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1 large onion
• Fresh thyme
• Salt
• Pepper
• Stock cube/pot
• Fresh basil
• Optional: soya cream, I used alpro cuisine single soya

Kitchen equipment:

• Oven
• Pan
• (Emersion) blender
• Large oven tin

Instructions:

1. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius
2. Wash and cut your tomatoes and put them in a roasting tin
3. Peel you garlic, peel and cut your onion and scatter both over the tomatoes
4. Drizzle or spray some olive oil over the tops and sprinkle with salt and pepper, add the fresh thyme
5. Roast tomatoes in the oven for 1.5 hours, checking every 15 to 30 minutes to make sure nothing is burning; browning is good

• 

• 

6. After roasting, transfer to your blender (or pan when using an emersion blender), add the stock, basil and 1 L of water and blend

TIP: use the water you add to your pan to wash out the roasting tin; this will ensure you get all the roasting flavour into your soup!