Grilled Cheese & Tomato Soup The Welsh Way (Rarebit Recipe)

The recipe starts with some beautiful Roma tomatoes, the riper they are the more flavour your soup will have, remove the stalks and slice them in half, then remove the green bit where the stalk was attached. This part is a bit woody and usually doesn’t get fully broken down in the blender.

Next the 2 red onions, just slice them in half and remove the papery skin. Then slice off the very end of the root, any other dry-looking parts and cut the onion into a similar size to the tomato halves, probably quarters or sixths.

Next 3 carrots just take the very top off and any roots from the bottom. Im using carrots because they’re a great thickener for blended soups and they also have a slightly sweet flavour that brings out the flavour of the tomatoes.

Finally 4 cloves of garlic, just lightly crush them, peel the skin off and take off the bottom.

Place everything in a roasting tray, pour over some olive oil and season generously with salt. Give everything a good mix with your hands, this is a step that chefs will always take but home cooks might not. It gets everything evenly coated in oil and salt, which will give you more even roasting plus it’s great for your skin!

Turn the tomatoes so they’re all facing up, this helps them to lose some moisture when cooking. Load the tray into a preheated oven set at 180c 355f, for around 20 to 30 minutes.

Next, the “grilled cheese” part of this recipe. It’s been crowned the ultimate cheese on toast countless times. It’s what’s known as a Welsh rarebit, sometimes known as welsh rabbit, but it doesn’t use any rabbit in the recipe.

It has tonnes of flavour, it’s really easy to make and it uses just a few everyday ingredients. The first of which is beer, you ideally want a dark beer, something that has a deep, slightly bitter flavour, think Guinness flavours rather than Budweiser flavours!

Im making 2 portions in this recipe, so I only need 35ml, roughly 3/4’s of a shot glass. Place that into a bowl and into the microwave for 20 to 30 seconds. Of course you can do this in a saucepan as well, you’re just looking to get the beer steaming, this removes any alcoholly taste.

Whilst the beer is still hot add in 10g of butter, a heaped teaspoon of English mustard, if you don’t have english mustard then you could use wholegrain. I would avoid Dijon or American-style yellow mustard they’ll be too sweet for this recipe. Next into the bowl a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce and lastly the most important ingredient, 125g of grated cheddar cheese. Im using mature cheddar cheese this is also known as sharp cheddar in other parts of the world. The cheese needs to have a strong, punchy flavour a mild cheddar just won’t work.

Mix all of that well until you have something that looks like this.

This is a simple version of rarebit, some traditional recipes start by making a roux, they might use some milk or multiple cheeses. All these other versions tend to create a lot of washing up whereas this version uses just a bowl and a spatula.

Now we need something to put this on, any type of bread will work, you want a thick, sturdy slice, lightly toast it on both sides.

Now just spread the rarebit onto the toast, cover it corner to corner and mound it up in the middle. Set that to one side until you need it.

By this point your vegetables should be ready, you just want the carrots and onions to be soft. Now spread 2 heaped tablespoons of tomato puree over the vegetables. This is going to give the soup a deeper colour and stronger tomato flavour. Place that back into the oven to roast for another 5 minutes to unlock the flavours of that paste.

5 minutes of roasting later, this tray smells deeply tomatoey and it was time to finish this soup. Place everything in a blender or liquidiser.

I usually start on a slow and build up to high speed, don’t forget to crack the lid a little hot things can blow it off. Once you have a reasonably smooth paste you can start to add the hot vegetable stock bit by bit. The amount to use will vary from soup to soup, so Im going to start with just under a cup and go from there. In total this soup took 500ml or around 2 cups of stock for a thick winter-style soup.

Cook the rarebit under a grill aka broiler for until its bubbling and golden in places. If your quick enough and you used boiling hot stock when blending the soup you can serve it in a warm bowl straight away. After 5 minutes in the oven, the rarebit is done looking and smelling amazing!

Yield: 2 portions

Grilled Cheese & Tomato Soup The Welsh Way (Rarebit Recipe)

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This recipe is the Welsh answer to the humble grilled cheese and tomato soup combination. The grilled cheese part is what's known as Welsh rarebit, it's the ultimate cheese on toast or grilled cheese on the planet (IMO)! It's packed full of flavour, pretty simple to make and sure to put i smile on your face.

The tomato soup half of this recipe is a simple approach to a soup that's prepared with the oven and a liquidizer, you will not need a saucepan for this recipe! It's a great, hands-off approach to making a fresh, healthy soup with fresh ingredients.

Ingredients

• RAREBIT
• 125g mature (sharp) cheddar cheese
• 35ml / 3/4s of a shot glass of stout, ale or beer
• 15ml / 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 10g / 1 teaspoon unsalted butter
• 1 heaped teaspoon English mustard or 1/2 tsp English mustard powder
• 2x thick slices bread
• TOMATO SOUP
• 1kg tomatoes (6-8 Roma tomatoes)
• 2 x red onions
• 3 x carrots
• 4 x garlic cloves
• 2 heaped tablespoons of tomato puree
• 250ml - 750ml (1-3 cups) of veg broth/stock

Instructions

• RAREBIT

1. Heat the beer in a saucepan until simmering, then turn off the heat. (you could also do this in a bowl in the microwave)
2. Add the mustard, Worcestershire sauce, butter and grated cheese.
3. Mix until well combined.
4. Lightly toast the bread on both sides
5. Spread the mixture generously onto the toast and finish under the grill (broiler) or in a hot oven.

TOMATO SOUP

1. Slice the tomatoes in half, peel and slice the onions into quarters, take the tops off the carrots and peel the garlic.
2. Place everything into a roasting tray with some olive oil and salt, give everything a good mix so it's evenly coated in oil.
3. Roast at 180c / ….f for 20-30 minutes until the carrots and onions are soft.
4. Then add 2 tablespoons of tomato puree, mix in with the vegetables and roast for another 5 minutes.
5. Then place everything into a blender or liquidiser (you may have to divide it by 2 or 3)
6. Blend until you have a thick puree, then add hot vegetable stock until you are happy with the thickness.
7. Serve straight away.