Roasted Red Pepper & Tomato Soup

Let's hear it for another installment of blended soups!! As you know, we're trying to hit all the colors of the rainbow, and red was on our list today! The intent for the soup was for the peppers to have the starring role, but I added one too many tomatoes to the pot! And these San Marzano plum tomatoes have such a wonderful intense flavor that it masked some of that bell pepper taste. With that being said, it was still a pretty kick butt soup!

As with all my soups, I started out sweating 1 diced onion, 3 sliced carrots and 3 ribs of celery in some olive oil and 2 tbsp butter. Let that sweat over lowish heat for 15 minutes, then add a few cloves of minced garlic. I had intended on roasting fresh red peppers, but they didn't look so hot at the store, but I lucked out in finding a 32oz jar of fire-roasted red peppers which looked better, were already roasted and were no more expensive than the fresh ones. I roughly chopped up those and into the pot they went. I opened up a 32 oz can of those wonderful San Marzano tomatoes, and put in about 2/3 the can with juice. Trust me, the soup was great, but perhaps only add 1/4 to 1/3 the can if you want the peppers to shine.



After a few minutes warming through, I added chicken stock to the top of the veggies, some S&P and a few tsp dried basil. That's it! Let it simmer for 15 minutes until all veggies are soft, reseason if necessary, and perhaps add a bit of butter to smooth out the flavor. Blend away and of course add more stock if it's too thick!



Check RED off my list!