Quick tomato soup has always been one of my favorite comfort foods, and this time I upped the game by adding a jar of smoky roasted red peppers and a butter-and-flour roux to give the soup extra body and richness. I just love the simplicity of this Tomato and Roasted Red Pepper Soup. All you need is a loaf of crusty French bread for dipping and you’ve got a simple, yet luxurious meal. #treatyourself
Make it Creamy, or Not
The first time I made this roasted red pepper soup I finished it off with a cup of milk to make it creamy. But honestly, I tasted it before the milk and it was still a really bangin’ soup, so I decided to keep it simple. If you do want an extra creamy soup, simply add a cup of whole milk or a splash of heavy cream at the end. Do not let the soup boil after adding milk, as that can cause it to curdle.
What to Serve With Roasted Red Pepper Soup
You definitely want some sort of crusty bread, Homemade Croutons, Grilled Cheese, or Pesto Cheese Toast to dip into this awesome soup (pictured with plain pesto smeared toast). A really light and simple side salad would also be a nice way to round out this meal. If you want to get really fancy, you can drizzle a little bit of olive oil or pesto over each bowl of soup for extra color and flavor.
To make pesto toast, 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.
Tomato & Roasted Red Pepper Soup
Servings 4 1.25 cups eachIngredients
- 1 yellow onion ($0.32)
- 4 cloves garlic ($0.32)
- 2 Tbsp butter ($0.22)
- 2 Tbsp all-purpose flour ($0.02)
- 1 12oz. jar roasted red peppers, drained ($1.99)
- 1 28oz. can crushed tomatoes ($1.19)
- 1/2 tsp dried basil ($0.05)
- 1/4 tsp dried thyme ($0.02)
- 1/4 tsp freshly cracked black pepper ($0.02)
- 2 cups vegetable broth ($0.26)
Instructions
- Dice the onion and mince the garlic. Add the onion and garlic to a soup pot with the butter and sauté over medium heat until the onions have softened.
- Add the flour to the pot with the onions and garlic. Continue to sauté for about two minutes.
- Transfer the onion mixture to a blender and add the roasted red peppers (drained). Purée until smooth.
- Transfer the red pepper purée back to the soup pot. Add the crushed tomatoes, basil, thyme, pepper, and vegetable broth. Stir to combine and dissolve any flour left on the bottom of the pot.
- Heat the soup over medium and allow it to come up to a simmer. Simmer the soup, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes.
- Taste the soup and add salt or other seasonings to your liking. The amount of salt needed will depend on the salt content of your broth. I did not add any additional salt. Serve and enjoy!
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Nutrition
How to Make Roasted Red Pepper Soup – Step by Step Photos
Dice one yellow onion and mince four cloves of garlic. Add the onion and garlic to a soup pot with 2 Tbsp butter and sauté over medium heat until the onions have softened.
Once the onions have softened, add 2 Tbs of all-purpose flour and continue to sauté for about two minutes.
Transfer the onion mixture to a blender and add one drained 12oz. jar of roasted red peppers.
Purée the peppers and onions together until smooth.
Transfer the roasted red pepper mixture back to the pot. Add one 28oz. can crushed tomatoes, 1/2 tsp dried basil, ¼ tsp dried thyme, ¼ tsp freshly cracked pepper, and 2 cups vegetable broth. Stir to combine and dissolve any flour left on the bottom of the pot.
Heat the soup over medium, allowing it to come up to a simmer. Simmer the soup, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes. Finally, taste the soup and add salt or other seasonings to your liking (You may or may not need to add salt at the end depending on the salt content of your broth. I did not add any.)
Serve hot with bread for dipping! I garnished my bowl with a little drizzle of olive oil and some more freshly cracked pepper.
Thank you for the recipe. Its easy way to cook it and very delicious food. I’m Love it.
Great recipe for when your wisdom teeth get pulled out xs
Tastes great, thank you!
I look forward to being able to eat a grilled cheese made from homemade sourdough bread with this.
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.
Keep in mind that dairy mutes flavor, so if you add a lot of dairy, you have to spice more heavily
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.