Tomato soup will be 'hearty and comforting' with 1 added ingredient

Tomato soup will be "hearty and comforting" when you add one surprising ingredient. Autumn is upon us, with evenings gradually becoming colder and darker as we head towards the end of the year. And when the weather starts to bite, there's nothing better than coming home to hot restoring meal like tomato soup.

But if you're looking to mix it up a bit, there are plenty of ways you can take your tried-and-tested recipe and make them more interesting with unsual ingredients. Food writer Esther Clarke previously shared one in which she adds something you may not have thought of.

Writing for The Guardian, she explained that you start by roasted some garlic in foil, and baby tomatoes with olive oil and flaky sea salt on separate trays. She then fries onion and celery with a bit of sea salt, adding some thyme towards the end.

She then adds the roasted tomatoes some veggie stock to the pan and squeezes in the garlic out of their skins.

Esther then stirs the mixture and leaves it to simmer for 15 minutes. After that you use a stick blender to get it to the right texture before adding the game-changer, orzo.

This is short-cut pasta, known as known in Italy as risoni, which cooks in the soup for a further 10 minutes.

She serves it up with some cheese toasties, declaring the dish a "perfectly comforting, easy midweek meal".

You can find the recipe for the dish here.

Nagi Maehashi of the popular recipe website Recipe Tin Eats also roasts tomatoes when cooking tomato soup at this time of year.

She explains that she tends to make the dish in the "shoulder season" of early autumn despite there not being the same quality of fresh tomatoes around at this time.

But Nagi says "this is easily dealt with simply by roasting the tomatoes which coaxes out the natural sweetness and enhances the flavour".

The foodie also opts to add a "hint of smoky flavour by tossing them in smoked paprika and roasting them long enough to get a little char on them", before adding them to the pot with other incredients.