Easy Red Pepper Soup

Easy Red Pepper Soup Like tomatoes, red peppers came to Italy from America and Italians have made peppers the center pieces of some incredible dishes. My creamy red pepper soup will show you why. Smoky roasted red peppers, potatoes and fresh herbs are slowly simmered and broth in wine then I add the creaminess, Mascarpone cheese. Fresh croutons give a crunchy accent to this creamy red pepper soup. What I love about soup is how easy it is to make and how easy this to transport. So it makes a perfect appetizer when I’m making food for a client. I’m going to start by chopping my ingredients here. I’m going to need a couple of onions and the red pepper soup is so much fun because it has a beautiful red color. It’s vibrant and so when you serve it, they’re all excited right from get go, the beginning of the meal. I’m just going to chop these onions. Now, it doesn’t matter how big or how small you chop the onions because I am going to puree all before I serve it. We’ll do one more onion. We’ll use a little bit of olive oil here at the bottom of the pan and here we go at the onion. We’ll just toss that, add a little bit of salt and some pepper and we’ll start sweating the onions, so that it become translucent. We’ll let those cook a minute while I get some garlic in the pan. A couple of cloves of garlic. My client that I’m cooking for like soups. She’s pregnant and she really likes the soothing comforting flavors and texture of a soup and also she can have it the next day for lunch which is key when you have someone to come over and you a meal. You’ll love those leftovers. Have that in here. Now, I’m going to add some carrots. Now, the reason I’m adding the carrots is because the carrots take away a little bit of the acidity that you can get from jarred bell peppers. Now, potato. The reason I’m adding the potato is because it’s a natural thickener. So, I’m going to use a regular rustic potato and it’s got a lot of starch in it. The starch will be released in the soup and thicken it without having a lot of cream and fat to it. Now, we’ll add that, all the potato in here and we’ll add a little more salt and pepper and at this point, you could add whatever vegetable you wanted whether it’s broccoli, spinach, cauliflower, a mixture of all different types of vegetables even carrot soup. This is sort of the way you start out. Now, a little flavoring. I love thyme. I think thyme works so well with the peppers. It’s a little lemony, so it sort of brightens it all up then makes it fresh. Now, we’re ready for the peppers. Now, I’m using jarred peppers and the reason that I’m using the jarred peppers is because it makes it so much faster to make the soup. Otherwise, I’d have to grill them, peel them and chop them. So you go to make you’re not buy the peppers that are preserved in vinegar because that will change the texture and the flavor of the soup. So these are just preserved in water and makes life so easy. Look what a cinch it is, we’ll pull them out of here, they’ve already been seeded and peeled, just chop them up and put them in there. I like the grilling of the peppers. It gives it a smoky flavor. You could even add yellow bell peppers in here and you could do half the soup in red and have the soup in yellow if you wanted to, just a little more salt in here. It looks pretty. Now, we’re going to add a little bit of sugar to even out all the flavors and some wine. Some white wine. Again, more flavor to all the vegetables. To finish it off, chicken stock. The chicken stock gives it a fantastic rich flavor. So six cups of stock, we’ll bring it up to boil and then I’m going to cover it and simmer it for 30 minutes until all the vegetables are cooked and after that, I’m going to puree it and we’ve got a fantastic soup ready to go. I’ve reheated the bell pepper soup and now I what I’ll have to do is I’m going to top it with some home made croutons and a dollop of Mascarpone cheese.