Beautiful image of peppers by Csengele Horn-Barta from Unsplash.

Ree Drummond has a wonderful recipe for roasted pepper soup that I will make often – since it’s easy and so good. I did make a few changes, but stayed pretty true to Ree’s recipe.

Normally I always drain and rinse canned veggies, but because the peppers were in a glass jar, I tasted the red pepper jar liquid.  It wasn’t very salty and had lots of pepper flavor, so I tossed it in, too. Not sure if that breaks some kind of kitchen “law” – but it tasted great.

Ingredients:

2 tbsp olive oil
1 large yellow onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp chopped dry oregano, or 2 tsp fresh oregano, minced
1 good-sized russet potato, peeled and chopped into ½” cubes
3 jars (12 oz each) roasted red peppers, sliced – plus the jar liquid
2 tbsp tomato paste
1/2 cup white wine
4 cups vegetable stock
1/2 cup half n half (Ree uses heavy cream)
1 tbsp cider vinegar (Ree uses red wine vinegar)
1 Tbsp butter
1 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
Grated Parmesan cheese, for serving

Heat oil in a large pot. Add onions and cook for 2-3 minutes. Add garlic and cook another minute. Add potato, roasted peppers, tomato paste, salt and pepper. Mix well and let cook for 5 minutes.

Add white wine and let it cook down for 3-4 minutes. Then add the stock and pepper jar liquid. Cook on medium-low heat for 20 minutes, checking to see that the potatoes are nice and soft. Remove from heat, and buzz with an immersion blender until everything is fairly smooth. Add cider vinegar, butter and 1/2 and 1/2 and let heat for a minute or two. Check seasonings.

Serve with fresh grated parmesan sprinkled on top. So good – and even better the next day.

I also stirred in a tsp of butter at the end, so you could do that too.

For a vegan version – leave out the 1/2 and 1/2 and butter, or substitute vegan butter.