Categories: Hot SoupsSoups

Tomato and Rice Soup

Gentle tomato soup with rice filling garnished with freshly chopped basil is a russian variant of tomato-basil soup.

It is beef broth based and if you want to make it more tomaty and thick, reduce amount of water you use for broth and increase amount of tomatoes.

I’ve garnished soup with basil even though it isn’t very widespread in Russia, but it gives a nice kick to flavor of this soup. After all basil and tomatoes are the combination which can never taste wrong.

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:
    Tomato and Rice Soup Recipe: Step 1
  2. I forgot to add peas to the ingredients picture, so here they are; if you use frozen peas unfreeze them:
    Tomato and Rice Soup Recipe: Step 2
  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:
    Tomato and Rice Soup Recipe: Step 3
  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:
    Tomato and Rice Soup Recipe: Step 4
  5. Keep tomatoes boiling for about 20 sec:
    Tomato and Rice Soup Recipe: Step 5
  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):
    Tomato and Rice Soup Recipe: Step 6
  7. Cut each tomato in quarters and remove stem parts, then puree in blender:
    Tomato and Rice Soup Recipe: Step 7
  8. When meat broth is ready peel onion, pierce it in several places with a small knife and add to the cooking pot:
    Tomato and Rice Soup Recipe: Step 8
  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:
    Tomato and Rice Soup Recipe: Step 9
  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:
    Tomato and Rice Soup Recipe: Step 10
  11. Dice beef into pieces about 1 inch big, remove bone(s):
    Tomato and Rice Soup Recipe: Step 11
  12. Add diced beef back to the broth and bring to light boil:
    Tomato and Rice Soup Recipe: Step 12
  13. Add thoroughly rinsed rice and mix and boil for 10 mins:
    Tomato and Rice Soup Recipe: Step 13
  14. Then add peas:
    Tomato and Rice Soup Recipe: Step 14
  15. And pureed tomatoes:
    Tomato and Rice Soup Recipe: Step 15
  16. Add about tablespoon of salt (or more to taste):
    Tomato and Rice Soup Recipe: Step 16
  17. Season with ground black pepper and dried basil if you want:
    Tomato and Rice Soup Recipe: Step 17
  18. Pour to soup bowls and garnish with chopped fresh basil:
    Tomato and Rice Soup
Enjoy!

View Comments

  • Thank you for the great recipe and tip (I really didn't know what to do with my sour soups because of the tomatoes...)

  • Suggestion from Yuriy mom: if tomatoes are sour, put a whole leaf (or 2) of cabbage to the cooking pot, it will take sourness down a bit (don't need to put cabbage to the bowls, just boil it with soup)