Roasted Tomato and Red Pepper Soup

This is fabulous!  I’ve been meaning to try making this from scratch for ages.  It was worth the wait.

I found a number of variations online, but you don’t need to go fancy for this soup.   A special thanks to Dennis Caswell for the recipe on his Rock ‘N Roll Kitchen blog.  You know, I just love the Internet.  15 years ago, who would think that anyone with 1/2 a brain and a computer could easily find recipes shared by a complete stranger living in Great Britain?

Here’s how I made it:

That’s a bit over a pound of tomatoes and closer to 2 lbs of red peppers.

I just sliced the tomatoes in half, seeded and halved the peppers,  halved one onion, and peeled 6-8 cloves of garlic. I then rubbed them with olive oil and sprinkled with dried basil.

I started them off at 275 degrees, but it was slow going, so I upped it to 400 at the end.  Different recipes give different temperatures and lengths of time, but figure 20-45 minutes depending. In the end, you want them to look like this:

Well, it is a little hard to tell in this picture.  And, FYI – I flipped the tomatoes part-way through.  But, you basically want the skins split and wrinkled on the red veggies, and it is fine if they get a bit charred.

Next, I peeled off the really tough outer layer of the onion halves.  The garlic was a bit tough, too but it ended up not causing an problem with the soup’s texture.  however, next time I will roast the garlic with the skin still on and then peel.

I then put the roasted veggies in a pot with 3 cups of puoltry/veggie stock.*   I think it was three cups – perhaps 3 1/2.  I know I have three cups left:

Well, lets go for 3 cups and add more if you want a thinner texture.  I used 8 cups of water when I made the stock that morning but seemed to lose more liquid than usual.  See below for how I made the stock.

The final step was to use my handy-dandy new immersion blender and puree the whole lot right in the pot.  You can also put part of the stock  and the veggies into a regular blender and then add back to the rest of the stock.  Then, I seasoned with salt and freshly ground pepper.  heated it up, and that was it!  I hear it freezes well, but I think we will be eating it all in a short time.

So, there it is.  A lovely soup.  It would be great served chilled in the summer, also.  Now I want to try the variation I found called: “Roasted Red Pepper Tomato Soup With Onions, Garlic, Garbanzo Beans & Oh Why Not? Artichokes” Click HERE to see the recipe on the blog Farmgirl Fare.

*And, for the stock:  from the freezer, the neck and innards from one turkey and one chicken, three corncobs (Just pop them into the freezer after you eat the kernels off – the BEST for stock!) a handful of asparagus stems, and, from the fridge, some leftover raw kale, a stick of celery, a carrot or two, half and onion, a bay leaf, and…probably a few cloves of garlic – I can’t remember.  Into the pressure cooker with 8 cups of water it went for 30 minutes after it came to pressure.  NOTE:  you can use whatever you want – more poultry parts, just veggies, whatever.  However, I highly recommend corn cobs in all stock.  They add a great flavor!

So, that’s it for now.   Thanks for reading.  🙂