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Luxuriously creamy Tomato Crab Bisque, loaded with hidden veggies, it’s smooth and creamy with just a hint of heat. So delicious as a starter or a main course!
Blushing.
This beautifully luxurious Tomato Crab Bisque is the perfect color.
The flavors in my tomato crab bisque are downright perfect for spring. Light and beautiful jumbo lump crab meat paired with creamy tomato soup base. She’s elegance, she’s grace, she has her life together.
I like serving it with a sliced, and olive oil rubbed toasted baguette on the side. And if you’re just not feeling a warm soup, you can totally serve this gazpacho-style by cooling it down before serving.
Layers and layers of delicious deep flavors in this simple little tomato crab bisque.
We’ll start by slow roasting some veggies, onions, carrots, tomatoes and garlic. If you’re thinking this sounds a lot like my secret ingredient tomato basil soup, that’s because it inspired this bisque recipe. Roasting humble vegetables low and slow really brings out all of their delightful, delicate flavors and smells. The roasting process adds a ton of natural sweetness to your crab bisque.
Natures candy is slow roasted tomatoes.
I’m convinced.
This is the second time I’m making this crab bisque. It’s absolutely wonderful!!
Ingredients for tomato crab bisque
- Tomatoes: You can use all Romas, Italian plums, or cherry tomatoes. I prefer a combination here. Typically I’ll use halved Italian plum tomatoes and whole cherry or grapes.
- Onion: you’ll need half of a large yellow or white onion, cut it into wedges rather than a chop so that it cooks in the same time as the tomatoes
- Carrots: use baby carrots or larger carrots that are cut into a similar size
- Garlic: is the heart and soul of the aromatics in this recipe. I typically add in a palmful
- Olive Oil: just a glug to wet all the flavor baseingredients before they do into the oven
- Shrimp, Seafood or Fish stock: use anything you like, even chicken stock will do. But the best way to enhance the seafood flavor is to use a shrimp or fish stock. You can learn how to make homemade shrimp stock here
- Worcestershire sauce: adds a complexflavor by adding umami to the bisque
- Basil Pesto: adds freshness to the bisque with the basil and creaminess from the blended nuts. You can use my delicious homemade basil pesto recipe or use a store-bought version here too
- Seasonings and Spices: you’ll need cayenne pepper, sweet paprika for color and flavor, and old bay seasoning to bring out the natural flavor of seafood. You can substitute smoked paprika for sweet paprika if you prefer for this bisque to have a smoky flavor
- Heavy Cream: adds richness and works beautiful with the sweetness of crabs
- Fresh Crab Meat: You can cook whole crab yourself and remove the meat or purchase lump crab meat from Dungeness crabs, Alaska crab, or other crab species that you like.
Why you’ll love this family favorite recipe!
- It’s veggie forward. Yes it’s a bisque so there’s cream involved, but the roasted veggies really shine here too and add plenty of texture, color and flavor to the broth.
- It’s happily a gluten-free dish. The one caveat is that you must use a gluten-free pesto (my homemade recipe fits the bill) The nuts in the pesto do all the work along with the cream so you don’t need to melt butter, use all purpose flour, or prepared roux.
- The complex flavors speak for themselves. As in your guests aren’t gonna know what hit them. That flavor base makes the best crab bisque and really lets the crab flavor shine bright.
Other Soup Recipes to Try:
- Zucchini Corn Chowder
- Marry Me Chicken Soup
- Roasted Garlic White Chicken Lasagna Soup
- Turkish Chicken Soup
- Roasted Garlic Potato Soup
Blushing Tomato Crab Bisque
Ingredients
Roasting:
- 1 ½ pounds fresh tomatoes see notes
- ½ large onion cut into wedges
- 2 medium carrots peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces
- 5 whole cloves of garlic
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
Tomato Crab Bisque:
- 4 cups shrimp or seafood stock
- 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
- 2-3 tablespoons basil pesto
- ¼ – ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
- ½ teaspoon sweet paprika
- ½ teaspoon old bay seasoning
- ½ – 1 ½ cups heavy cream
- 8-16 ounces lump crab meat fresh or thawed (see notes)
Instructions
- ROAST: Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 375ºF. Place everything listed under 'roasting' on a large sheet pan. Sprinkle with a big pinch of salt and pepper and toss everything using your hands. Let roast for 1 hour if you have time you can also do this on 350ºF for 1½ hours. Check on the ingredients halfway through and toss.
- BLEND: Transfer the veggies along with any juices to a large pot or dutch oven. Pour in the seafood stock, Worcestershire, 2 tablespoons pesto, cayenne, paprika, and old bay and blend it all using an immersion blender.
- FINISH: Place the stockpot over medium-high heat, stir, and allow the soup to reach a simmer, reduce the heat and let simmer for 10 minutes. Add the cream and allow the soup to come back to a simmer.
- ADJUST: Taste and adjust with salt and pepper as desired. You can also add the last tablespoon of pesto if you'd like. Add the crab meat (see notes) and let it heat through for about 5 minutes. Serve in bowls topped with additional crab meat and chopped chives if desired.
Notes
- Make your own shrimp stock: if you want to make your own, you’ll need: shells from 4 pounds of shrimp, 6 cups water, 10 sprigs parsley, a few sprigs of thyme, a bay leaf, 6 cloves garlic, salt, a few peppercorns, and ½ teaspoon of nutritional yeast (optional). Combine this in a large stock pot and allow the stock to come to a boil before lowering the heat and allowing it to simmer for 30-45 minutes. Strain the stock through a fine mesh strainer before using.
- Like a good chowder, this crab bisque tastes better as it sits, I suggest preparing this 24 hours in advance of serving. I’d hold off on adding the crab to the bisque until just before serving though.
- Crab meat: use as much or as little as you’d like. If you want to keep things economical, add a spoonful to just the tops of each bowl before serving rather than stirring it in!
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Like This? Leave a comment & rating below!
Delicious and easy
Didn’t know if I should have the tomatoes but roasted whole and it worked fine
I am making this for Easter
I made several substitutions (canned fire roasted tomatoes instead of fresh, added a bell pepper, used a whole onion, used canned crab and fake crab, and added corn) but it came out super delicious and I’m sure the original version would be even better!
This is the second time I’m making this crab bisque. It’s absolutely wonderful!!
This was superb even without the old bay seasoning and very less cream ! Thank you
I’ve been making a VERY similar crab soup for many years taught to me by a chef friend. I add red, orange and yellow peppers along with a few jalapeños (all cleaned of seeds) to the roasting pan of veg. Also I mix 50/50 the cream with milk to cut the richness just a tad. I’ll add some olive oil or sour cream if needed for silkyness. It’s one of the top 5 requested dishes from my family when they visit. You cannot go wrong with this recipe.
This looks delicious, and I am going to make this tonight as I have leftover crab. One question though. Do you cut up or slice the tomatoes before roasting or roast them whole?
Hi there! I suggest slicing any large tomatoes in half so that they roast evenly!
amazing
This was superb even without the old bay seasoning and very less cream ! Thank you
Happy to hear you enjoyed it, Rabia! I appreciate you taking the time to come back and comment 🙂
Hi. I’m from the Netherlands. It’s very difficult to find old bay seasoning here. Can i replace it for something else? This soup looks so amazing delicious. X Chantalle
Hi Chantalle! I’m glad to hear you’d like to try this recipe. Old Bay seasoning is just a mix of spices like cinnamon, cardamom, allspice, mustard, and others. You can simply omit it from the recipe or use any spice mix that you may already have that contains these ingredients. Or if you’re interested, here is a recipe for making your own Old Bay seasoning. Hope that helps!
I made this for dinner last night, it was very easy to make and so good. The only thing I did different was use 1 cup of half and half instead of heavy cream also I was unable to find seafood stock/broth so I used 2 cups of clam juice with 2 cups of low sodium chicken broth. The veggies turned out great except for the garlic which were pretty dried out after cooking. The next time I make this I will add the garlic half way through the roasting and the other thing I think I would do is use less cayenne as it was quite spicy. This was really wonderful as are the other recipes I have tried. I am planning to make the stir fry (for the 3rd time) tonight I’m so hooked on that. Thanks for such great recipes.
I really love soups.But i haven’t tried tomato soup yet.Seeing the recipe and the picture, i feel like it will be the best.Gonna try it. Instead of crab meat can we use any other substitute? I do get allergic with crab.
Sorry I missed your comment earlier — shrimp would work well in place of the crab or even cooked flaked fish!
This looks so yummy- I am planning to make it over the weekend. I do have a question though, we are not big dairy eaters- any substitute for the heavy cream?
Thanks!
Hi Elizabeth, you can omit the cream if you’d like and up the pesto a bit, the pine nuts tend to add a lot of creaminess to this or you could try adding coconut cream. Not sure how well the coconut cream would work with the other flavors though as I haven’t tried it myself. Hope you enjoy the soup!
I’m very late here, but I would use cashew cream or batista style (extra creamy) oat milk.
This looks amazing!