Pepper Rainbow Soup
Submitted by blackjack
Late-summer pepper rainbow soup with multicolored bell peppers floating in a lemon-and-egg-yolk thickened broth. Greek avgolemono technique meets a confetti of red, yellow, and green peppers.
YIELD
6 servingsPREP
20 minCOOK
10 minREADY
30 minThis soup is built around the late-summer farmer’s market reality: red, yellow, orange, green, even purple bell peppers showing up in the same display, all begging to be cooked together. Cut into different shapes, the colored pieces float to the top of a clear broth and create a confetti effect, with each color staying distinct.
The broth itself uses a classic Greek thickening trick. Beaten egg yolks get tempered with hot soup, then stirred back into the simmering pot. The yolks emulsify the broth into a velvety, lemony, almost custardy texture. This is the same technique behind avgolemono, the Greek lemon-egg chicken soup, and it works exactly the same way here.
The critical timing detail is the pepper cook. The recipe specifies one minute in simmering broth, and the notes warn that two minutes is the upper limit. Cook them longer and the peppers lose their color and crunch, dulling into limp ribbons. Cook them less and the broth tastes raw and grassy.
Cooked rice goes in for body and bulk, turning a light first-course soup into something substantial enough for a summer supper.
Pro Tips
- Cut each color of pepper into a different shape (rounds, strips, triangles) for the visual play the recipe’s notes suggest. It is the difference between a pretty soup and a stunning one.
- Temper the egg yolks slowly. Adding hot soup a tablespoon at a time prevents the yolks from scrambling into eggdrop-style strands.
- Do not boil the soup after the yolks go in. Boiling breaks the emulsion and the broth turns curdled.
- Add the lemon juice off the heat. Boiling kills the bright lemon top notes that make the soup feel summery.
Variations
- Swap the chicken broth for vegetable broth and skip the egg yolks for a vegan version (it loses the velvety body but stays vibrant).
- Add a half cup of cooked orzo instead of rice for a Greek-pasta texture.
- Garnish with crumbled feta and chopped fresh dill for a clear nod to the avgolemono tradition this technique borrows from.
Ingredients
Directions
Bring the broth to a boil.
Cook the rice.
Chop the onion and sauté the pieces until they are golden brown.
Add to the broth. Add the savory and chives to the broth.
Clean the seeds and cores from the peppers and chop the cleaned peppers into pieces.
Set chopped peppers aside.
Add the rice to the broth and cook for 5 minutes.
Add the chopped peppers to the boiling broth and simmer for 1 minute.
Meanwhile, beat the egg yolks in a 2-cup bowl.
Thicken the soup with the egg yolks by adding the hot soup to the beaten yolks a little bit at a time, stirring constantly, until a cup or two of soup has been added to the yolks.
Dump this mixture back into the simmering broth.
Add the lemon juice. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Serve.
NOTES: * A light summer soup with multicolored peppers -- Every year in late summer, produce counters fill with multicolored bell (capsicum) peppers.
Green bell peppers, red bell peppers, yellow bell peppers.
Even purple bell peppers.
Creative chefs try hard to take advantage of the splash of colors, and make rainbow salads or rainbow appetizers.
Here is a different way to rejoice in multicolored peppers: pepper soup.
The peppers float to the top of a light broth and artfully Serves 6-8.
The thickening technique is identical to that used in avgolemono recipes, which you can consult for more details.
The flavor and texture balance of the soup depends on the amount that the peppers are cooked.
The more you cook them, the more their flavor exudes into the broth but the more they lose their texture.
About 2 minutes in simmering broth is the right amount.
- You can have fun with colored geometric patterns as you cut the peppers.
They don’t have to be chunks.
You can cut the yellow peppers into circles and the green peppers into long strips and the red peppers into cross sections and the purple peppers into stocky triangles.
Be creative. The colored shapes will float to the top of the broth and play hide-and-seek with each other.
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