Beefy Tomato Soup is one of our most popular soup recipes! Ground beef and pasta in an addicting tomato cream sauce, and it’s ready in 30 minutes!
We love making this easy, cozy soup on busy nights or for a comforting weekend meal. All you need is crackers or buttered bread for dipping, and a crisp salad on the side if you get the urge.
An Easy Soup Recipe That’s Done In 30 Minutes!
Because I like to try and use what we have in the house, I opened the freezer, the fridge and all the cabinets to take stock of what we had on hand. Sometimes going back out to the grocery store is just not something I want to do.
I grabbed some ground beef from the freezer, cream cheese from the fridge, onions, basil and garlic from the cabinets and got to work.
Beefy Tomato Soup has become one of our most popular recipe on our site and for good reason. It’s really easy to make, it’s done in less than 30 minutes and it’s so creamy and comforting, everyone gobbles it up.
This soup recipe is another way I like to use spaghetti sauce in recipes as a short cut and a boost of flavor. And probably one of my favorite ways, too. Also a jar of spaghetti sauce is usually something we have in the pantry so it’s an easy ingredient to use in recipes like this.
This beef and macaroni soup gets so thick it’s almost like a beef goulash. Some people have said that it’s similar to a homemade hamburger helper once the noodles soak up all the broth.
How Do You Make Beefy Tomato Soup?
Gather your ingredients together and start by cooking the onion and garlic in olive oil. Next brown the beef, add a few seasonings then pour in chicken broth and your jar of marinara sauce.
You can still make this soup if you don’t have a jar of spaghetti sauce, just substitute a 28 ounce can of crushed tomatoes or tomato sauce if that’s what you have instead.
Give it a stir and let it simmer for 10 minutes, not a full boil, just a simmer. Stir in cream cheese to make it nice and thick, add some fresh basil and finally add in the pasta.
Can You Cook the Pasta Separately For This Soup?
You sure can. If you like your soup to have more broth, cook the noodles separately and add it in the each bowl as you serve the soup.
A lot of our readers love the way that the pasta soaks up the broth the next day (and so do we). You can always add a splash more broth upon reheating if you like. But if you really want to hang on to all that addicting, creamy tomato broth then just add cooked pasta to your bowl before serving.
Variations
We get a lot of comments about the pipette that we use in this soup. We love this pasta shape because all the creamy broth gets all up inside the pasta, so you get all of that flavor in every bite. If you can’t find that pasta shape, use elbow macaroni, shells or any other short tube pasta shape.
Many of our readers say that they add fresh spinach to this soup, or other vegetables like peas and carrots. You can also swap out the ground beef for ground turkey or pork, even some Italian sausage would be great.
Looking For More Soup Recipes?
- Creamy Potato Soup with Italian Sausage
- Split Pea and Ham Soup
- Grandma’s Pasta Fazool
- Homemade Turkey Soup
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Beefy Tomato Soup
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Cook Time: 20 minutes
- Total Time: 25 minutes
- Yield: 6 servings 1x
Print Recipe
Pin RecipeBeefy Tomato Soup is an easy beef and macaroni soup that your whole family will love! This soup is done and on the table in less than 30!
Ingredients
- 1 pound ground beef
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 onion, chopped
- 3 cloves of garlic, minced
- 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
- 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 (24 ounce) jar of spaghetti sauce
- 4 cups of chicken stock
- 1/2 cup of cream cheese, at room temperature
- 1 1/2 cups elbow macaroni, shells or other short-tubed pasta
- 1/4 cup fresh chopped basil, divided
Instructions
- In a large pot heat the olive oil over medium heat.
- Add the onion and garlic to the pot and cook for 3-4 minutes, stirring, until the onion softens.
- Add the ground beef to the onions, breaking up with a spoon and cook until no longer pink. Drain any drippings if necessary. Season with the salt, pepper and oregano and stir to combine.
- Pour in the chicken stock and the pasta sauce, stir and bring to a simmer. Simmer the soup for 10-15 minutes, uncovered.
- Whisk in the cream cheese until combined, then add 2 tablespoons of the fresh basil.
- Pour in the pasta, stir and let cook for 10 minutes, covered, stirring halfway through cooking.
- Spoon into bowls and garnish with the leftover basil.
Recipe Notes
Your favorite spaghetti sauce can be used, or even a can of crushed tomatoes with a little more seasoning works!
NOTE: A few of our readers have commented that the noodles soak up all the broth when you reheat the next day. If you want the soup for leftovers with more broth, cook the pasta separately and then add it to each bowl as you heat it up! Alternately you can add another cup of broth to the soup when making.
- Category: Dinner
- Method: stove top
- Cuisine: American
I love this soup! I’m already thinking about making it again soon! So simple and taste like I worked hard in the kitchen! I doubled the recipe, but after ready other reviews, I decided to throw only half the noodles in at the end. I prefer my soup to be a little thicker, but I didn’t want it to be over kill. I boiled the other half on the side just Incase later it needed more. I never even used those. Thank you for this great recipe!
Perfect, thanks Crystal!
Yum!!!
This recipe is amazing! I followed the recipe as written and it was so good. My husband who is not a big fan of soups, loved it.
I have a soup swap coming up this weekend. One of my friends can’t have dairy so I am just going to make it without the cream cheese but I have faith that it will still be delicious.
Thank you for sharing.
It definitely won’t be a thick and creamy but I’m sure it will still be good! Thanks Autumn!
Very simple and easy to follow instructions. The ingredients are a common staple in anyone’s kitchen too. Even though, I did not have cream cheese and chicken stock available and just went on with substituting it with sour cream and a beef stock cube in water instead. It tasted absolutely delicious! I also used just a plain passata sauce and added extra oregano and pepper. My son and even my baby loved it!
Thanks so much for letting me know! That recipe is so versatile, I’m glad you made it work!
What’s the type of creamy cheese ur using?
any brand will work fine.
This is my 2nd time making this. So easy and yummy. First round, the pasta soaked up all the liquid, but my husband and kids loved it. This round, I added more liquid. I substituted the cream cheese for half and half.
A keeper! Husband loved it and I look forward to trying it on the grandkids lol. I did add a little extra broth .
I bet they will love it!
I made this soup with stewing beef and it was delicious. This has now become a family favorite.
Love to hear that! Thanks Nicole!
Made this tonight for dinner, and it was the perfect soup for the cold fall night we’re having. My husband and daughter very much enjoyed this, it’s so flavorful, and very hearty! I made a bigger pot as we will enjoy it tomorrow also!!
Thanks again!! :)
It’s perfect for these cold days! And rainy days, and snowy days…so happy you liked it!
I don’t own an oven so I have been running out of simple, hearty ideas of what to cook on the stove. I just made this for my family and it is a HIT! Very filling and full of flavor. It will definitely be a recipe I come back to again and again. Thanks for sharing!
Awesome Rachel! Happy to hear it, thanks for checking in!
Made this today. Very delicious! Everyone here enjoyed it. But I must have measured incorrectly because it was very thick. My daughter said “This isn’t soup, its pasta.” Haha. Husband said the same. He loved it because he’s not one for brothy soups so the thickness was perfect for him. Next time I will keep an eye on it and if it’s still to thick for my preference I’ll just add more broth. Or cook the pasta separately as suggested. Thanks for sharing.
You probably didn’t, it is a thick soup! More like a stew or even a goulash. Dan used to not like brothy soups either, so way back when we created this recipe we made it thick on purpose. But yes, as the post says you can cook the pasta separate or add another cup of broth when you’re making the soup. Glad you liked it!
Wow. I hardly ever leave reviews on recipes but i am blown away at how good this is. I made it exactly as called for in the recipe except i used Rao’s marinara sauce. This will definitely be on rotation in my house. Thanks for an awesome meal
I’m so glad you liked it Brooke – thanks for letting us know!
Easy and delicious. Easily made gluten free for me.
So tasty! Made it for the first time tonight and I love it! I added corn tortilla strips at serving. My only complaint is it’s a bit thin. Maybe I didn’t add enough cream cheese. Any ideas how to thicken it up, I appreciate any feedback!
That’s the first time anyone has told me it was too thin! I usually get the reverse comment!
This is both very tasty and filling. I used ground turkey instead of beef and 5 cheese tortellini instead of pasta shells. ????????????????
The tortellini swap out sounds amazing!
Had to improvise a little with what I had on hand and pressed for time…but we loved it! Definitely going in my go-to binder! Simple and relatively inexpensive to make.
Thank you so much for such an awesome recipe :)
Improvising is what it’s all about! I’m so happy you you loved it!
How do you get the cream cheese to completely melt into the soup? When we tried this it just became blobs of cheese, even when using a whisk. We ended up melting half of the cream cheese separately in a pan and then adding it to the soup. Would have tried a handheld blender, but thought it would probably destroy the ground beef.
Did you have the cream cheese at room temperature? It should melt in the soup pretty easily then!
This satisfied everyone’s palates. It was soup and stew all in one. Very delicious and so easy! Went well with a glass of red cab. Next time I will try with a little cream and not cream cheese. It was a little to much for my one daughters taste buds. Thank you for sharing.
We’ve done the same thing when we were out of cream cheese, it tastes great! Glad you and your family enjoyed it!
I made this tonight, it was so good!! My family loved it, I will definitely make this again. Thanks!
Thanks for letting me know, glad you guys liked it!