Green Tomato and Bacon Soup

I love this soup! I actually save green tomatoes at the end of the season just for this! I don’t modify it with anything, just follow the recipe here. The green tomatoes give it a lightly sour but not overwhelming flavor. I like to use a sweet maple or brown sugar cured bacon to add a little sweetness to balence nicely.

I liked the idea of bacon, onion, garlic as a base. I had 5 cups of green cherry tomatoes and a dozen baby yellow zucchini that I had harvested before the early snow and frost. Read how others had added carrots and potatoes so I diced the carrots and sauteed them after the onions in my instant pot, added diced potatoes and chopped zucchini then tossed in the tomatoes. I let them all warm up them added chicken broth and covered and cooked on the soup setting. I liked the end result and stored them in pyrex bowls. First bowl I added cayenne pepper, more salt and pepper and it was better. Second bowl I added just pepper and crumbled pumpernickel bread. It was a nice change..a bit unusual but tasty and very warming on a cold Minnesota night. I’ll have a bowl for lunch and another for dinner for several days and opportunities for more seasoning trials.

I added a couple of potatoes and some whipping cream and used the immersion blender on it. Fantastic!

I made it just as stated and thought it was great! It was tasty, felt warm and healthy and we enjoyed it! It would be fun to try the other variations, and you could easily add any extra veggies you have in the fridge, but I loved what a simple, delicious way it was to use up the green tomatoes at the end of the year.

I waited too long to make this soup so most of my green tomatoes turned red! Oh well, it was wonderful and will save this recipe for the future.

This is a great recipe to help use up all those green tomatoes that had to come in off the vine. Following other reviewer’s suggestions, I drained off all but ~1 Tablespoon of the bacon grease, added diced celery & carrots with the onion to saute, changed out ~1 cup green tomatoes for a potato, and about 10 minutes before serving, threw in a cup of peas. It’s not a recipe I’d serve to company, but one I’ll definitely make again when I have excess green tomatoes. We thought it was very good with the changes I made. Thanks for the recipe!

I was astounded at the deliciousness. I’m going to make another pot with my remaining green tomatoes and freeze it.

Made a few minor tweaks (trimmed off some bacon fat, skipped the celery salt and used yellow onions instead of red and chicken broth instead of veggie broth) and scaled up by a quarter to avoid leftover broth. Liked the blend of smoky, salty and tart. This will be a good one to make once each fall.

This soup was wonderful. The bacon really helps with the tartness.

I used 32 oz. chicken broth instead of 3 cups vegetable broth and added fresh mushrooms , celery (sauteed in the bacon grease) instead of celery salt , 3 bay leaves, a little oregano and basil, and poured in a little half and half at the end.

I’d made the Green Tomato Casserole recipe on this site, and while it was tasty, the texture was way too soupy and the shredded cheese most people recommended adding didn’t melt right. (Probably bc of all the acid in the tomatoes.) So I used five heaping cups of THAT for the five cups of green tomatoes called for in this recipe. (The casserole had celery and onions as well — I used Vidalias rather than green. The casserole has you cover the toms/onions/celery in a whisk of 1/4 c olive oil, 2 T brown sugar, 5 T soy, black pepper, red pepper flakes.) I think it was the soy/brown sugar/red pepper flakes — and how they mixed w/ the liquid in the toms to make a rich sauce/gravy — that added a richness and depth to the soup that made it so yummy. Like others, I added a large potato, and that, too, added some creaminess and depth. I also put some red toms in for added color, but the flavor was lovely as well. Finally, used an entire pound of bacon, but cut out most of the fat before saute-ing. I realize all the above is a pretty radical change, but it was so delicious I’m about to make a second batch, as we ate the first in just two sittings! (Though I am starting w/ the casserole recipe — sans cheese — in order to make that rich gravy, as it seems key to the soup!

Used 8 cups of sectioned green tomatoes. Added a bag of tiny purple potatoes, a large carrot, a couple handfulls of lentils, 4 smashed garlic cloves, a handful of sliced cremini ‘shrooms and 4 cups of veggie broth, all in crockpot. Sprinkled on bay, thyme, rosemary, salt and pepper. Cooked onion in bacon fat but removed fat and drained off excess grease before adding bacon and onions to crockpot. Cooked on low for 9 hours. Towards the end I mashed most of the potatoes against the side of the crockpot, threw in a can of green beans and a can of cream of mushroom soup. Delicious.

I made it like the original recipe. The soup was way too tart for my (and my family’s) taste. It would be better with less green tomatoes and add potatoes, carrots, peas, celery, etc.. Also need to remove about 75% of the bacon grease.. I may make it again with those changes.

We added a couple of small potatoes. Fantastic soup – added to my list of regulars. Tastes just like cabbage rolls.

I added a left over baked potato and it was delicious! Perfect for end of tomato season and cooler weather.

First time making soup with green tomatoes…followed directions as stated, reduced green tomatoes by 1cup, ran out of green…my whole family loved it..

wasn’t crazy about the flavor so I added carrots celery roasted jalapeno and 2 cans of baby peas what a difference .

Like the first reviewer, I too replaced some of the green tomatoes with potatoes and I added a little bit of carrot for color too. I actually enjoyed the tartness the tomatoes brought to the soup but my supply was limited and I’ll admit this recipe made me nervous and I didn’t want to use my entire stash of tomatoes. That is the only reason I subbed potatoes for some of the tomatoes. I have no regrets there either because they were a nice addition. The one complaint I have about this recipe is using all of the grease the 8 pieces of bacon yields. It gave the soup a rich bacon-y flavor yes but the end result was entirely too oily. I will definitely make this again next season when I can use the full amount of tomatoes but to be honest, I will still add some potatoes. It needs the depth in my opinion.

I’ve wondered about using green tomatoes in soups before. I was surprised by the good flavor this soup had. With that said I knew 5 cups of green tomatoes would be too many for us. So I cut the amount of them to 2 cups and added 2 cups cubed potatoes instead. May have to add a little extra water to soup (as it cooks) if you use the potatoes. By cutting the amount of green tomatoes made it spot-on for us. I’m thinking about pureeing the cooked green tomatoes before adding any bacon next time. Good recipe if you want to try something interesting for a change and use up some left-over produce. Update: I forgot to mention that I rendered out fat in my bacon and then added to cooking soup, I got the flavor but not so much of the fat.