Creamy sherried tomato soup

I used to love canned tomato soup...until I tried panera's creamy tomato soup. That shit is expensive and the line there is always outrageous so I set out to make my own. Here it is! Throughout the recipe Ill add some comments about how to make it a lighter calorie soup as well. 

Ingredients: 

1. 46 oz tomato juice (give or take)

2. two 12.5 oz cans diced tomatoes (I used "petitie" diced tomatoes)

3. 1 cup heavy cream (optional, but worth it. You can also do half and half, or even skim milk.)

4. 2 tbsp chicken stock (the yellow powder stuff)

5. Fresh ground black pepper

6. 3-5 tsp sugar

7. 4-6 tablespoons butter (or oil)

8. 1 cup of cooking sherry

9. basil and parsley

You also need a large soup/stock pot and a blender.

Heat the butter in a soup/stock pot. Dice up your onion. 

Toss it in the melted butter. Sweat the onion for about 5 mns or until transparent. 

Dump in the diced tomatoes....

And the tomato juice. Stir it up. 

Time to add the sugar! Sugar helps balance out the acidity of the tomatoes. Without it, its going to smell like the tomato juice your grandma likes to drink out of the little cans. 

aaaand the chicken stock. This just gives it some extra flavor. 

Now, get your blender out (and your step stool if you arent tall enough to dump the soup into the blender)

Dump the soup in and blend it up. This is not completely neccesary, but I personally am weird about the texture of foods and I wanted to blend it up into a nice creamy soup. Blend it for about a minute. I had to blend it in two batches. 

Return to the pot and add tons of fresh ground black pepper. 

Turn the heat up til it starts to boil, then turn it back to low. 

The best part. Add a cup of cooking sherry! Here is why: alcohol boosts the flavor of tomatoes. There is a reason why a lot of tomato sauce is made with vodka. Dump it in, stir, simmer. 

Chop up some parsley and basil (fresh if you have it, dry if you dont). 

Dump it in. 

Turn the heat off and add a cup or so of heavy cream (or half and half or skim milk)

Look. at. that. 

Serve it with grilled cheese. (duh)