How to make tastiest pure vegetarian tomato soup

Firstly we need to choose the best tomatoes for making a good soup which are deep red tomato having a thin skin and sweet, juicy flesh.

• Now we need to prepare our vegetables, cut each tomato into quarters and slice off any hard cores because they don't soften during cooking and it will make hard bits in the soup at the end. Peel the onion chop them into small pieces. Chop the celery roughly the same size.

• Put spoon oil into a large heavy-based pan and heat it over a low heat. Hold your hand over the pan awaiting you can feel the heat getting higher from the oil, after that tip in the onion and celery and mix them together with a wooden spoon. Keep the heat low, cook the vegetables until they're soft and changed to faint colored. This should take about 10 minutes and we should stir them two or three times so they cook equally and don't stick to the bottom of the pan.

• Holding the tube over the pan, squeeze in about 2 tsp of tomato purée, and then stir it around so it turns the vegetables red. Now put the tomatoes in the pan, shower in a good pinch of sugar and grind in a little black pepper, then tear each bay leaf into a few pieces and put them into the pan. Stir to mix everything together, put the lid on the pan and let the tomatoes stew over a low heat for 10 minutes until they shrink down in the pan and their juices flow satisfactorily. Stir it often so it will keep everything well mixed.

• Gradually pour in the stock, moving at the same time to mix it with the vegetables. Turn up the heat as high as it will go and wait until everything is bubbling, then turn the heat down to low again and put the lid back on the pan. Cook gently for 25 minutes, stirring a couple of times. At the end of cooking the tomatoes will have broken down and be very mushy looking.

• Now its time to take out the pan from the heat, take the lid off and wait for a few seconds or so while the steam escapes, then take out the pieces of bay leaf and throw them away. Put the soup into your mixer until it's about three-quarters full, fit the lid on tightly and turn the machine on full.Blend until the soup is smooth you can also stop the machine and check it by lifting the lid after about 30 seconds, then pour the soup into a large bowl. Repeat with the soup that's left in the pan.