Every time I make this casserole recipe, each bite reminds me of the heartwarming feeling of sitting at home by the fireplace, filling my soul with that delicious stewed tomato soup. It's the perfect dish for cold nights, or when having friends and family over.
I hope whenever you make this casserole, you'll think to a moment in your past when you needed some comfort after a long day's journey, whether it be a hard day at work, or the tail end of a thousand mile road trip. Let's start with the ingredients below.
Ingredients28 oz canned whole peeled tomatoes, undrained (or 4-5 medium sized fresh tomatoes, peeled)
3 slices stale white bread, crust removed
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
Handful of shredded cheese (of your choosing)
Optional: Your favorite tomato soup spices (i.e. okra, celery, onions)
DirectionsIn preparation for this recipe, I usually start by cutting the crusts off the bread so I don't have to be fiddling with a knife later on. The recipe calls for stale bread. You can use fresh bread if you like, but I usually reserve fresh bread for things that need it to be fresh. Honestly, I feel like my bread goes stale so quick that I hardly ever have any fresh bread laying around anyway.
Feel the need for some fiber in your comfort food? Try the recipe with whole wheat bread. Is that really going to add that much fiber? I don't know, but it's the thought that counts, right?
The beauty of this casserole recipe is its flexibility, and that is shown off by the very first real step, which is creating the raw tomato soup base. You don't need to actually cook the soup, but just combine the soup ingredients in a bowl. The cooking part will be handled when we bake the casserole.
The base recipe calls for 28 ounces of whole peeled tomatoes. If you can get your hands on fresh tomatoes, then that translates to around 4-5 medium tomatoes. A word of warning for those tempted to chop the tomatoes versus peeling them: to get that smooth soup feeling in every bite, you're going to want them peeled. I know, that can be a pain, and if you're not feeling up to it you can get canned whole peeled tomatoes from most grocery stores. You lose a little street cred, but nobody will be able to tell the difference between canned or fresh tomatoes once everything has been baked.
Now, here's the fun part. You can spice up your tomato base however you like. Choose your favorite style of tomato soup, and just start adding the ingredients into the bowl of tomatoes. When I prepare my base, I add things like celery, onions, and okra. If I have it, I'll throw in some thyme. Honestly, whenever I discover a new type of tomato soup, I return to this recipe and make it with those new ingredients. If you're a fan of tomato soup, you'll find yourself returning to this recipe time and time again.
While you're preparing your tomato soup base, you can preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. I usually only start pre-heating once I have the tomatoes peeled and in the bowl to avoid the risk of getting distracted and forgetting about the oven. While you're at it, grease an oven-proof casserole dish with nonstick spray or butter.
Make sure to mix the ingredients of your tomato soup base in the bowl, and to crush the tomatoes lightly between your fingers to make large chunks. Once you're satisfied with the mixture, you can pour it all into the casserole dish.
There should be enough fluid to fill in the bottom of the casserole pan, but not enough to cover the crushed tomatoes. Check out the image below as a reference.
If you were wondering this entire time what was going to prevent this soup-inspired casserole from turning into an awful mush, here's your answer. Remember that bread you prepared earlier? Tear off small pieces of it and spread them evenly over the tomato soup base.
Use it to cover the tomato soup base in the casserole dish. The bread will soak up most of the fluid from the tomatoes, and help bind everything together into a cohesive casserole filling. There should be enough bread to almost fully cover the tomato soup base beneath it, as seen in the image below.
Butter melts pretty quickly, and usually I'll melt the butter at this point in the microwave. If you're impatient, you could throw it in the microwave before tearing up the bread. Pour the melted butter as evenly as you can over the torn up bread. Follow it up with the brown sugar, and then the salt.
Now, stir all of these ingredients together. This is when the bread really absorbs all of the ingredients, and the mixture should be pretty thick and chunky at this point. As you can see in the image below, almost all the fluid has been absorbed by the bread.
Bake, uncovered, for 45 minutes, until the top is lightly browned and the mixture is thickened. As you can see in the photo below, the mixture should be mostly cooked into casserole form.
Keep an eye on it every 10-15 minutes as it cooks. You can also remove the casserole dish after about 30 minutes and cover it with aluminum foil for the last 15 minutes if the top is getting browned too quickly. Oven cook times often vary (I grew up with an oven that had a broken bottom heating element. That always made following recipe cook times very interesting) so you'll want to make adjustments for your own appliance.
Finally, top it off with some of your favorite shredded cheese. For a finishing touch, garnish it with a spare bit of basil. For me, I usually add a bay leaf on top.
Now, it's time to grab a blanket, light up the fireplace, and chow down on your piping hot stewed tomato casserole!
