Instant Pot Creamy Tomato Basil Soup

Tomato season at its peak. The Brandywines are cracking in the heat, split open and ugly and magnificent — the taste of a Brandywine tomato that's cracked in the sun is the taste of summer admitting it went too far and not being sorry. You eat them over the sink, sliced thick, with nothing but salt, and the juice runs down your arm and you don't care because this is August and dignity is for people who don't grow tomatoes.

I made tomato sandwiches. This is the blog post that writes itself every August: good bread, mayonnaise, thick slices of garden tomato, salt, pepper. That's all. If you add lettuce you're making a different sandwich. If you add bacon you're making a BLT. The tomato sandwich is its own thing — a celebration of the tomato, unadorned, unaccompanied, the solo performance of a fruit that doesn't need a supporting cast.

Helen and I canned all week. Forty pounds of Romas, blanched and peeled and quartered and packed into jars with basil and salt. The kitchen was a factory — water boiling, lids popping, steam everywhere, the two of us moving in coordinated efficiency around the stove and the counter and each other. Canning is a two-person job in this house. I run the water bath. She runs everything else. The jars lined up on the counter afterward: thirty-two quarts. Thirty-two quarts of August, sealed and shelved for January.

A reader named Margaret from Michigan wrote to say she'd been reading the blog since April and had started cooking from scratch for the first time at age sixty-seven. Her husband died two years ago. She'd been eating frozen dinners. She tried the boiled dinner. Then the baked beans. Then the chowder. She said the kitchen felt like hers again, instead of like a room that belonged to someone who wasn't there anymore. She thanked me. I sat at the computer and stared at her email for a long time.

That's what this is for. Not the hundred and twenty readers, not the comments, not whatever Helen means when she says "engagement metrics." This. Margaret. One person in Michigan who picked up a pot and started cooking again because an old man in Vermont said it was worth doing. That's the whole thing. That's the reason.

I wrote her back. I said: keep going. The pot is on the stove. The recipe is in the box. You're doing fine. You're doing the brave thing, which is the ordinary thing, which is the hardest thing of all: feeding yourself. Keep going.

Thirty-two quarts of tomatoes. One email from Margaret. August. The garden gives. The kitchen gives. We give what we can.

Those thirty-two quarts lined up on the counter aren’t just preserved tomatoes—they’re preserved August, and come January when the garden is under a foot of Vermont snow and Margaret in Michigan is standing in her kitchen trying to remember what warmth tastes like, this is the recipe I want her to have. Crack open one of those quarts, or a good store-bought can if that’s what you’ve got, and let the Instant Pot do the work. The basil was packed in with the Romas for exactly this moment.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 20 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 medium yellow onion, roughly chopped
4 cloves garlic, smashed
2 cans (28 oz each) whole peeled tomatoes, or 1 quart home-canned tomatoes plus one 28 oz can
1 cup chicken or vegetable broth
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)
1/2 cup fresh basil leaves, packed, plus more for serving
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons cream cheese, softened

Instructions

Sauté the aromatics. Set the Instant Pot to Sauté mode. Melt the butter, then add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened and translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook 1 minute more until fragrant.
Add tomatoes and broth. Pour in the tomatoes (crushing whole tomatoes by hand as you add them) and the broth. Stir in the sugar, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes if using. Scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of the pot.
Pressure cook. Secure the lid and set the valve to Sealing. Cook on High Pressure for 10 minutes. When the cycle finishes, allow a natural pressure release for 5 minutes, then carefully switch the valve to Venting to release any remaining pressure.
Add the basil. Remove the lid and stir in the fresh basil leaves. Let the basil wilt into the hot soup for 2 minutes.
Blend until smooth. Using an immersion blender directly in the pot, blend the soup until completely smooth. Alternatively, transfer in batches to a countertop blender—hold the lid down with a folded towel and blend with caution.
Stir in the cream. With the Instant Pot on Sauté (low), stir in the heavy cream and cream cheese until the cream cheese is fully melted and the soup is silky. Taste and adjust salt and pepper as needed.
Serve. Ladle into bowls, top with a few fresh basil leaves, and serve with good crusty bread or a thick-sliced tomato sandwich on the side if August has been kind to you.

Nutrition (per serving)

Instant Pot Creamy Tomato Basil Soup — What Thirty-Two Quarts of August Tastes Like in January