Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Soup
Quick tomato soups have always been one of my favorite comfort foods, and this time I upped the game with a jar of roasted red peppers and a butter-and-flour roux to give the soup extra body and richness. I love the simplicity of this Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Soup. Alls you need is a loaf of crusty French bread for dipping and you’ve got a simple, yet luxurious meal.
Easy Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Soup
Make it Creamy, or Not
I finished off this soup with a cup of whole milk for a little extra creaminess, but honestly, I tasted it before the milk and it was still a really bangin’ soup. So, if trying to avoid dairy milk, you can just leave the milk out. But don’t skip the butter because the butter actually makes a huge difference here. If you must use olive oil or a non-dairy butter substitute.
Do I Need a Food Processor?
You can make this recipe without a food processor. A good blender or an immersion blender will work just fine, it just so happens that I didn’t have either, so I needed to use my food processor. If you have an immersion blender you can blend everything right in the soup pot. If you have a regular blender, I suggest blending the ingredients cold, like I did in the food processor, and then adding them to the soup pot to avoid having to blend hot ingredients (that can be very dangerous).
How to Serve Roasted Red Pepper Soup
You definitely want some sort of crusty bread, crouton, grilled cheese, or pesto toast (pictured) to dip into this awesome soup. I don’t have a recipe for the pesto toast, but I just mixed a little extra olive oil into the pesto to make it more spreadable, coated slices of my French bread, then baked at 400ºF for 7-8 minutes.
Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Soup
Ingredients
- 2 Tbsp butter ($0.22)
- 1 yellow onion ($0.40)
- 4 cloves garlic ($0.24)
- 2 Tbsp all-purpose flour ($0.02)
- 2 15oz. cans crushed tomatoes ($1.38)
- 1 12oz. jar roasted red peppers ($2.49)
- 2 cups vegetable broth* ($0.26)
- 1/4 tsp dried basil ($0.03)
- 1/8 tsp dried thyme ($0.02)
- Freshly cracked black Pepper ($0.05)
- 1 cup whole milk (optional) ($0.30)
Instructions
- Dice the onion and mince the garlic. Add the onion, garlic, and butter to a large soup pot. Sauté over a medium flame until the onions are soft and transparent (about 5 minutes).
- Add the flour to the pot and continue to stir and cook for 1-2 minutes. The flour will form a paste with the butter and onions and begin to coat the bottom of the pot. As soon as the flour that is stuck to the pot begins to turn slightly golden, remove it from the heat.
- Add the crushed tomatoes (with juices), roasted red peppers (without juices) and the flour paste from the soup pot to a food processor or blender. Blend until smooth, then return the contents to the soup pot.
- Add the vegetable broth, basil, thyme, and some freshly cracked pepper (10-15 cranks of a pepper mill) to the soup and stir to combine. Heat and stir over a medium flame until the soup begins to simmer. Use the spoon to help dissolve any flour stuck to the bottom of the pot as you stir.
- Once the soup begins to simmer, turn off the heat. Add the milk, if using, and stir to combine. Taste and add salt if needed (this will depend on the salt content of your broth).
Notes
Nutrition
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How to Make Roasted Red Pepper Soup – Step by Step Photos
Dice one yellow onion and mince four cloves of garlic. Add them to a soup pot along with 2 Tbsp butter. Sauté over medium heat until the onions are soft and transparent (about five minutes).
Add 2 Tbsp flour and continue to stir and cook. The flour will form a paste, but just keep stirring and cooking. It will begin to coat the bottom of the pot, and as soon as it starts to turn even a little bit golden (like in the top left of the photo), turn off the heat.
Remove the peppers from the liquid in a 12oz. jar of roasted red peppers. Add the peppers and TWO 15oz. cans of crushed tomatoes to a food processor or blender (don’t drain the tomatoes).
Also add the floury paste & onions from the soup pot.
Now blend that up until it’s smooth. Since most of those ingredients were room temperature, this was a totally safe operation. Yay!
Now transfer the soup back to the pot and add 2 cups vegetable broth, 1/4 tsp dried basil, 1/8 tsp dried thyme and some freshly cracked pepper (10-15 cranks of a pepper mill).
Bring the soup up to a simmer over medium heat.
If you want a lil’ extra creaminess, stir in a cup of milk. Now, heat + acid (from the tomatoes) can cause the milk proteins to seize up a bit and look grainy, but if you keep stirring it blends in. Finally, taste the soup and add a little salt, if needed. I didn’t add any to mine, but the Better Than Bouillon that I use to make my broth usually provides enough salt for me.
And that’s that. A quick, rich, comforting Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Soup. Now give that soup something to dip with. Grilled cheese? Pesto toast? Croutons? Goldfish crackers? What’s your favorite thing to top tomato soup with?
Delicious and easy! I used chicken better than bouillon, because that is what we had. Very satisfying soup! The roasted red peppers added to the flavor and heartiness. We ate them with the spinach feta grilled cheese sandwiches. Yummy!
I’m excited to try this recipe!
Did you use Better Than Bullion vegetable or chicken base?
You can use what you have on hand. I believe Beth used Vegetable :)
I found the bread recipe. duh on me
This soup is one of our favorites. I have made it around 20 times. My tweaks are to add 50% more basil and thyme but less garlic. I always add the milk. I use either Better Than Bouillon roasted vegetable or chicken flavor. (Thank you for that money-saving tip!) I use an immersion blender before adding the herbs. I freeze the leftovers and while it changes the texture a bit, there is no reduction in flavor. When Aldi has Italian Toast in garlic Parmesan, I buy them to put in this soup. This is a flavorful, satisfying soup that comes together easily with ingredients I always have on hand.
I will make this over the coming weekend, but will use mostly canned stewed tomatoes, which I use to make my spaghetti sauce. There is a huge difference in the freshness of the taste of stewed over diced or crushed, plus they are usually flavored with green pepper, onion and spices. I use cornstarch for a thickener as it does not leave the aftertaste that flour sometimes will. Cheese bread or a grilled cheese sandwich will be paired up with a salad to round it out.
What about using chicken broth in place of the veggie broth?
You can definitely do that. :)
Can this soup be frozen?
I haven’t tried freezing this one so I don’t know for sure, but often times soups and sauces that are thickened with a flour roux tend to separate after freezing and thawing.
Is there any alternative to broth?? Or can we make it at home?
You can use homemade broth if you prefer.
Can I use coconut milk instead of whole milk?
I feel like the coconut flavor would be too strong and not mix well with the rest of the flavors in this soup.
A word of caution: I used a can of diced tomatoes instead of crushed because that’s what I had in my pantry but that was a mistake because I ended up with a lot of seeds in the finished soup. I decided to strain the finished soup before putting it in the fridge, but that also meant removing bits of tasty garlic and herbs.
The calculator for the crushed tomatoes is messed up. It doubles the number of cans as well as doubling the number of ounces.
Thanks! I’ll fix that. :)
This recipe is a great place to start, but it needed more “oomph”. The recipe as is lacks sufficient creaminess and flavor. But after I doctored it up, it was a real winner.
I used strained tomatoes instead of crushed, which I think probably made thicker. It just wasn’t creamy enough still, even though I used grass-fed whole milk, so I added a few table spoons of ghee. That did the trick. I also used tapioca starch instead of flour.
The flavor was still lacking, so I used copious amounts of dried basil, black pepper, fresh thyme, and I blended in it a little fresh basil I had on hand.
The left overs sat in the fridge for a day, and when I ate it for the lunch the next day it tasted even better than the night before. It turned out to be a perfect dish after making the above adjustments. The 2 and 3.5 year old ate it right up.
I was craving tomato soup, so I made this recipe. I thought it was okay, but it lacked the depth a flavor that I was looking for. It needed more creaminess for my taste. I also don’t like to use a lot of canned food for my cooking and I could definitely taste a metallic flavor from the canned tomatoes. In the past, I have used leftover marinara sauce as a base for my tomato soups and I will probably do that next time. My husband didn’t finish his soup, and in the past other versions I’ve made, he’s eaten it. However, I did use the leftovers as a base for a imitation crab pasta, and it came out tasting really good. I used your spicy butter seafood pasta recipes as inspiration. I added some nutritional yeast as a subscriber recommended and diced of fresh roma tomato for chunkiness. Loving the end result. I am still excited to try a lot of your recipes but in the future, I will try to replace Frozen or fresh in place of canned. I just don’t like that metallic after taste.