;)
Creamy Vegan Roasted Red Pepper and Garlic Soup
Saturday, January 8, 2011 at 8:35PM This easy, tasty, super-creamy soup was inspired by, of all things, a blender. That, and a challenge from a friend.
Yes, after more than a year filled with green smoothies and veggie soups, I finally broke down and bought a Vitamix. I know I’m a little late to the party. I’ve been wanting one for months and months, but the trouble was that I already had a blender that was pretty decent
If you’ve heard of a Vitamix, you already know it makes a mean green smoothie. It takes the texture to a level of smooth that I didn’t think was even possible, no matter what I throw at it. But it was a lesser known Vitamix feature that I thought I’d test out first - the ability to ‘cook’ soup right in the blender. I’d heard about this before and always wondered what the big deal was. I mean, what is so hard about getting out one more pot?
Having now tried out this feature twice, I can say that for some reason, it really does seem to be significantly more convenient. Yesterday, I made a wonderful tortilla soup this way. Start to finish, including prep and clean up, took less than 15 minutes. Today’s recipe couldn’t be quite that fast given the time required to roast the peppers and garlic. Even so, there was very little hands-on time, especially considering the delicious, creamy result.
Speaking of creamy, this recipe is based on one from a friend that originally called for butter and cream. My good friend Cheryl, who is trying to avoid dairy, passed it along and asked me to veganize it. Since I was already roasting peppers anyway, I thought I might as well toss in a head of garlic to deepen the flavor and provide some of the richness offered by the butter in the original recipe. I replaced the cream with a simple mixture of soaked cashews and water. Other than that, I tried to keep the recipe very simple to let the flavor of the roasted peppers shine through. So here you go, Cheryl. I hope you enjoy it - I sure did!
Creamy Vegan Roasted Red Pepper and Garlic Soup
Makes 7 cups
4 red bell peppers, halved, de-stemmed and seeded
1 head of garlic, outer-most papery skin removed and top sliced off to expose cloves
1/4 cup raw, unsalted cashews
1 onion, peeled and chopped
1 tsp dried rosemary
5 cups low-sodium vegetable broth or water
3 Tbsp tomato paste
freshly ground black pepper and paprika to taste
Place cashews in a small bowl with cold water to cover, set aside. Heat oven to 450 degrees. Line a baking sheet with foil. Place red peppers on baking sheet cut side down and garlic head on sheet cut side up. Roast for approximately 45 minutes, until skin on peppers is blackened and garlic is soft. The garlic may be done before the peppers or vice versa, so be sure to check periodically. When done, remove from oven and pull the foil up around the roasted veggies and crimp together to create a seal. Capturing the steam in this way will make it much easier to remove the pepper skins. Careful, the foil will be hot. Set aside for 10-15 minutes while you prepare the rest of the soup.
Water saute chopped onion with rosemary for approximately 5 minutes or until soft. Set aside. Drain cashews and place in blender with the stock or water*. (I used water and didn’t miss the stock at all.) Blend on high until a smooth milk forms. Add the sauteed onions and tomato paste to the cashew milk in the blender. Set aside until the peppers and garlic are ready.
When peppers have cooled enough to handle, pull off and discard skins. Add peppers directly to the blender. Squeeze individual garlic cloves out of their cells and into the blender container. Blend on high speed until smooth. If you are using a high-powered blender, continue processing for 6-7 minutes until steam starts to escape. Otherwise, transfer to a stock pot and heat through until warm. Season to taste with pepper and/or paprika. Serve immediately.
If you’d like to make this a more substantial and filling soup, try stirring in a cup or two of cooked cannelini beans just before serving.
* If your blender isn’t big enough to hold all of the ingredients, you may need to blend in batches or use an immersion blender in a stock pot. If you go the immersion blender route, I’d still blend the cashews with one cup or so of broth in a regular blender to get them as smooth as possible, then add the cashew milk to the remaining ingredients in the stock pot before you do the final immersion blending.
** To make this recipe faster, you can roast the peppers and garlic up to a few days ahead if you like or skip the roasting altogether by using commercial roasted red peppers. If at all possible, I highly recommend that you roast them yourself. It is so easy and I find the flavor to be far superior.
gluten-free, soup in Recipes
Reader Comments (3)
I am hooked on your blog. Next week I´m tryng your brownies and your roasted pepper soup. Genious!
keep it up...please!
Just wondering, do you recommend the red peppers be organic?
-online replica Breitling Super Ocean contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world.