Gouda & Roasted Red Pepper Tomato Soup
As you probably know by now, I am a soup LOVER.
Especially as fall is approaching. I could eat a different soup every day for dinner and be completely content with my choices. One of my all time favorites is the classic tomato soup, which we all know absolutely MUST be accompanied by a gooey grilled cheese…mmm. But what if, and hear me out, we combined those 2 things into one delicious bowl? You heard me correctly. A super cheesy, decadent tomato soup. This soup is a whole meal all by itself.
So this isn’t strictly the grilled cheese dunking kind of tomato soup. I mean, no one is saying you can’t dunk a grilled cheese into this soup but you probably won’t feel like anything is missing if you don’t. This is the kind of soup that sticks to the ribs. You may not want to serve this daily, but for a delicious treat, it hits the spot.
This soup has roasted red peppers and cherry tomatoes, onions, garlic, cream and the most important ingredient…. gouda cheese! Who doesn’t love gouda? You could do a smoked gouda for even more depth of flavor or stick with the classic stuff. Either way, you’ll definitely be going back for seconds and maybe even thirds!
Gouda & Roasted Red Pepper
Ingredients:
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 1 large yellow onion
- 6 cloves crushed garlic
- 2-3 large red bell peppers
- 2 cups cherry tomatoes
- 1 large potato
- 1 bunch fresh thyme
- 3 bouillon cubes or vegetable broth instead of water
- 8 cups water
- 1 cup half and half or heavy whipping cream add more or less to taste
- 2 cups shredded gouda cheese plus extra to top
- 1/2 cup shredded parmesan cheese
- salt to taste
- black pepper to taste
- 2 tbsp herbes de provence
- 1 tbsp paprika
- 1/2 tbsp red pepper flakes optional
- sunflower seeds to top
Instructions:
- Set oven to 450 fahrenheit.
- Take the stems off your peppers, rub very lightly with olive oil and set on a parchment paper lined baking tray. Roast for 30 minutes.
- Add cherry tomatoes to baking tray as well, adding salt and pepper to taste. Allow to roast another 15-30 minutes. You may have to pull out the peppers while the tomatoes continue roasting, depending on the size of your pepper.
- Wrap hot roasted red peppers in foil or store in a container with a top outside the oven, allowing to sit for about 20 minutes. Cut a slit in the side of each pepper. The skin should peel off and you can open the pepper and scrape out the seeds. (You could also use jarred roasted red pepper to skip this step).
- Chop onions, crush garlic and dice the potato.
- Add olive oil to a soup pan on medium low heat.
- Add onions to the soup pan to sauté about 20 minutes. Add crushed garlic and seasonings. Allow to sauté until fragrant.
- Add diced potato, roasted tomatoes and roasted red pepper to the soup pot.
- Add water and bouillon cubes (or broth) and the bunch of thyme. You can keep the bunch all together - you will be pulling it out whole.
- Allow mixture to cook for 30-40 minutes. Pull out bunch of thyme.
- Blend with an immersion blender, or transfer to blender. Blend completely.
- Allow the blended mixture to cook 10 more minutes. Add cream & shredded gouda. Cook until everything is combined to your liking.
- Serve topped with more gouda and sunflower seeds. Enjoy!
