creamy roasted pepper soup

It’s definitely red pepper season here, as supermarkets are bursting with them. We picked up a big bag of them recently and made a super spicy chilli at the weekend, full of these flavoursome ruby red vegetables. But there was still an excess of them and rather than letting go off – which often happens – I decided that a soup was the order of the day, for a meat free Monday meal. Soup is so, so easy to whizz up and everyone will have their own favourites and ways of doing them, but this was so delicious, I just thought I’d share what was used to enhance the flavour.

Firstly, the remaining peppers (of which there were quite a few – maybe seven or eight), were roasted in an oven proof dish, with olive oil, salt and pepper, until charred. To speed up the charring, they were blitzed under the grill for a final five minutes.

A large white onion was finely chopped and sauted with a little olive oil until translucent and soft in a large pot. Once it had softened down, the charred roasted peppers were added, along with a few whole garlic cloves, half a jar of sun dried tomatoes and vegetable stock.

This was simmered for about 30 minutes and then blended until completely smooth and creamy using an immersion blender. Plenty of black pepper was added at this point, but only a pinch of salt, as there was enough saltiness from the stock, sun dried tomatoes and pre-seasoned peppers. Once blended to a creamy consistency, the juice of a freshly squeezed lemon was stirred in, to give it a little bit of a tart taste, and to balance out the sweetness of the peppers and tomatoes. It could easily be served just like this, straight from the pan, but a dollop of Greek yoghurt was added and drops of basil pesto – perfect for dipping big chunks of nutty bread into.

what you’ll need