Tomato and Rice Soup

Ingredients:

• 1.5lb beef for soup bone in
• 1.5-2lb of sweet tomatoes
• 1/2 cup of rice
• 1 cup of fresh or frozen peas
• 1 medium onion
• 1 parsley root
• 1 carrot
• A small piece of celery root
• Fresh basil
• Salt and ground black pepper to taste

How to prepare, step-by-step:

1. Prepare ingredients: any kind of meat for soup with bone will work here; tomatoes should be sweet or soup will be too sour, reduce amount of tomatoes if they are sour, optionally you can add potatoes before rice to make soup more nutritious:

   

2. I forgot to add peas to the ingredients picture, so here they are; if you use frozen peas unfreeze them:

   

3. Fill cooking pot with 2.5 quarts of cold water, add rinsed beef and put pot over moderate heat. Bring to slow simmering and cook until beef start getting soft (more tips on how to prepare beef broth are here); depends on the quality of the meat it may take 45 mins – 1.5h:

   

4. While beef broth is cooking, bring another cooking pot with water to boil, cut each tomato cross-like on tip and put to the boiling water all in the same time:

   

5. Keep tomatoes boiling for about 20 sec:

   

6. Pour boiling water out and put cooking pot under running cold water, then peel skin from tomatoes (it should be pretty easy to do now, but if you need more details on how to do it, read here):

   

7. Cut each tomato in quarters and remove stem parts, then puree in blender:

   

8. When meat broth is ready peel onion, pierce it in several places with a small knife and add to the cooking pot:

   

9. Peel all other roots: carrot, parsley and celery, and slice them in big pieces (later you will need to remove them, and that will be easier to do it pieces are big), boil broth with root vegetables for 20-25 mins:

   

10. Then either remove onion and all root vegetables with a skimmer or cover pot with a lid and filter broth liquid to the another cooking pot, whichever you like more, I used skimmer:

    

11. Dice beef into pieces about 1 inch big, remove bone(s):

    

12. Add diced beef back to the broth and bring to light boil:

    

13. Add thoroughly rinsed rice and mix and boil for 10 mins:

    

14. Then add peas:

    

15. And pureed tomatoes:

    

16. Add about tablespoon of salt (or more to taste):

    

17. Season with ground black pepper and dried basil if you want:

    

18. Pour to soup bowls and garnish with chopped fresh basil: