Healthy Roasted Garlic, Tomato, and Pepper Soup

It has been very cold here in California, in fact on some nights it actually is getting below 40 around here. I know all my Wisconsin relatives are laughing and saying that's shorts weather but for us in Cali that is freaking cold. Nothing is better on a cold winter day than a bowl of delicious hot soup so that is what I decided to make.  This recipe is inspired by Sarah at Frugal by Choice, Cheep by Necessity. 

What I love about making soup is how forgiving it is, you don't really need to follow exact measurements and that's exactly what I did. I just put in a little of this and a little of that till the soup tasted good to me.

First buy a boat load of tomatoes, I happened to use roma tomatoes because those tend to be more meaty and less seady and who wants  a seady tomoato?  This soup would be a great way to use up all those tomatoes from your summer garden or perhaps from your neighbors garden.

Roasted Garlic, Tomato, and Pepper Soup 
(all amounts are approximate, please season to your taste)
A boatload of tomatoes (about 5 pounds)
4 heads of garlic
4 red peppers
1 tablespoon Olive Oil
Salt and pepper to taste
2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1 tablespoon red pepper flakes (add 1 tsp at a time and season to your taste.
1 tablespoon dried basil.

1. Wash, de-stem, and cut the tomatoes, I cut mine into fourths. Throw them into a roasting pan. Mauviel M'Cook Roasting Pan with Rack & Bonus Kitchen Towel (Google Affiliate Ad)
2. Wash, de-seed, and slice some red bell peppers. I prefer red since they are sweeter than the green ones. I used 4 peppers. Throw them in the pan with the tomatoes so they can get to know each other. 
3. Take some garlic and throw that in the pan. I used for heads and didn't want to spend the time pealing all the cloves since I am also a lazy cook, so I just cut off the tops and nestled them in with the peppers and tomatoes. 
4. Drizzle some olive oil, salt, and pepper over the veggies and mix. You just need enough oil to lightly coat everything. I used about a tablespoon. 
5. Roast at 400 for about an 1-1 and 1/2 hours. Sarah recommended 1 hour but I did mine longer for 90 minutes. 
6. Let cool. When cool squeeze the garlic cloves out, if you were lazy like me and didn't peel them in advance. They should just pop right out. 
7. Transfer everything to a blender and blend until smooth.  You can run through a sieve if you want to remove the extra skin and seeds.  I transferred mine to a pot and  just used an immersion blender  Cuisinart SmartStick Hand Blender CSB-77 (Google Affiliate Ad)  so that I didn't have to pull out my blender. I also wanted the fiber that is provided by the seeds and skins and I like a chunkier soup. You can also use a food mill if you have one.  
8. Heat the soup and enjoy.  

The soup was very good as is but I couldn't leave well enough alone so I had to add to it. The soup was very thick so I added some chicken stock as I was running my immersion blender.  I then started to channel Emril and started yelling Bam! as I added about a tablespoon of red pepper flakes and a tablespoon of dried basil. I found about a coup of cooked yams left over in my fridge and added them so I could use them up.  I let everything simmer for 30 minutes and topped with some Parmesan cheese. This was a tasty sipping soup. Hubby and I enjoyed it for the rest of the day.  The remainder of the soup we placed in containers and froze so we can have some healthy lunches when we head back to work.