Reviewed: Jan. 14, 2003

A true celebration of the bell pepper in all its glorious colors. We've enjoyed it both served hot and cold. The lemon juice serves to keep the pepper flavor bright, and of course roasted garlic is a perfect complement to peppers. Be careful out there with the fennel if you are not fond of anise/licorice (we love it, but it should be a supporting note, not the melody!). Leslie, you suggest that we use home made vegetable stock rather than canned if possible; I concur - it would have been great to have had YOUR vegetable stock recipe to work with (I'll look for it under broths/stocks in All Recipes). I took the liberty of using fresh minced lemon and french thyme from my garden in place of the dry thyme the recipe calls for, used sea salt to puree some fresh garlic to use (in place of the garlic salt, which I find can be a bit acrid), and added the luxury of a few drops of a very good extra virgin olive oil to garnish along with the reserved julienned pepper. Thanks for a visually appealing as well as tasty addition to my soup recipe collection! Cristen G.

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29 users found this review helpful

Reviewer:

CRISTEN

Reviewed: Jun. 29, 2004

Great taste! Left out the fennel seeds though cause I'm not a big fan of the licorice taste. I used lemon pepper which gave it a spicy pep. Great recipe!

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2 users found this review helpful

Reviewer:

MARTINSANGEL

Reviewed: Feb. 5, 2005

This recipe is excellent! The broth almost tastes like spaghetti sauce, it's very low calorie, and looks pretty too! Thank you for sharing it!

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4 users found this review helpful

Reviewer:

SEDATEDGODZILLA

Reviewed: Mar. 9, 2005

Delish! I didn't completely peel the skin from the peppers (kind of a pain) and it didn't matter at all.

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26 users found this review helpful

Reviewer:

jett

Reviewed: Mar. 6, 2006

Excellent Soup! I loved the flavor of the fennel.

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3 users found this review helpful

Reviewer:

Sadie

Cooking Level: Intermediate

Living In: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Reviewed: Mar. 13, 2006

I really liked the flavor of this although, admittedly, I did use my own homemade broth (check out 'Basic Vegetable Stock' on this site). I didn't want to buy a whole bottle of fennel seeds just to use 1tsp in this recipe, so I used a star anise instead. What I didn't much like about the recipe was the very watery texture. If I was going to make this again I would double the amount of peppers, and probably cut back on the broth too. Anyway, with a nice thick slice of Viennese bread, this made a light but comforting lunch on a very wet and stormy day. Thanks, Leslie!

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8 users found this review helpful

Reviewer:

Caroline C

Cooking Level: Expert

Living In: Denver, Colorado, USA

Reviewed: Apr. 1, 2006

This soup was wonderful! I used homemade veggie broth from my juicer. The peppers were really easy to peel, I served it over rice, my husband and I loved it!

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3 users found this review helpful

Reviewer:

ootvas

Reviewed: Apr. 4, 2006

Wow. This recipe sure is time consuming but well worth the wait. According to other reviewers, the soup was too liquid-y so I only used 2 cans of vegetable broth, used 8 red peppers, and 22 cloves of garlic. Peeling the skin off the peppers was took a long time. I pretty much pureed then as much as I could (I wanted it that way) and added lemon juice and olive oil. The color is great and it had a very strong flavour. I wish there was more!!!

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6 users found this review helpful

Reviewer:

XXXNAUGHTY

Cooking Level: Intermediate

Living In: Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

Reviewed: Dec. 1, 2006

Fantastic soup which received rave reviews from my dinner guests last night. I used 8 peppers, but cut down the broth from 6 cups to 5. The peppers were very easy to skin after leaving them to steam in a sealed plastic bag. I Served the soup with crumbled feta cheese on top. I'll definitely be making it again...very soon!

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Reviewer:

HTK

Reviewed: Jan. 31, 2008

Amazing! I used 6 peppers and 4 cups of the vegetable broth, although I would probably use only 3 next time. I let the broth reduce down a bit in order to thicken it up into a stew. I generously splashed lemon juice over the peppers instead of using a lemon and left out the fennel. It tasted fabulous. My husband LOVED it - and he is usually a skeptic with new things. :) I cut about a 1/4 of the peppers into large 1 inch pieces and it made it really thick and chunky, which we loved. Less of a soup and more of a thick wintery stew. Perfect for cold nights!

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8 users found this review helpful