Roasted Yellow Pepper Soup

Five roasted yellow bell peppers get charred until their skins blister and puff, then passed through a food mill directly into a cumin-scented onion and garlic base. The food mill does triple duty here: it purees the soft pepper flesh, strains out all the seeds and charred skin, and eliminates the tedious step of peeling each pepper by hand.

The soup has a beautiful golden color that only yellow peppers can deliver. Cumin adds a warm, earthy note that deepens the roasted sweetness, and milk whisked in at the end gives the soup body without making it heavy or cream-forward.

Choose peppers with flat sides rather than very curvy ones. Flat surfaces make better contact with the baking sheet and roast more evenly. The peppers should be mostly blackened and very soft before they go into the bowl to sweat.

Chef Tips

• Cover the roasted peppers tightly with plastic wrap immediately. The trapped steam loosens the skins and makes them peel off easily in the food mill.
• Keep all the juices from the sweating peppers. Those roasted pepper juices are packed with concentrated flavor and go right through the food mill into the soup.
• A flour-onion roux cooks for 5 minutes before the stock goes in. This thickens the soup base slightly and removes any raw flour taste.
• The roasted pepper puree freezes beautifully. Make a double batch and freeze half for a quick soup another day.

Variations

• Dual color: Make this with red peppers too, then ladle both into the same bowl for a stunning two-tone presentation.
• Smoked paprika: Add a teaspoon of smoked paprika to the onion base for a deeper, smokier flavor.
• Cream finish: Swap the milk for heavy cream and add a drizzle of basil oil for a more restaurant-style presentation.