Hello friends,

Happy winter solstice, soon the days will become much lighter again!

We're heading into the coldest time of the year, so I thought I'd share with you my favorite soup recipe, which is Tomato, Capsicum, and Lime soup. The ingredient list is pretty small, and most years I've grown my own tomatoes, lime, garlic, onion, and chilli for the recipe. I've had a bad run of growing my own capsicums, so I buy frozen capsicums from Frozen Direct for the recipe, as it's much cheaper and it comes pre-chopped.

In this recipe you can choose whichever stock you want, we usually use a salt reduced chicken stock, or if you want a vegetarian option, go for a vegetable stock.

Tomato, Capsicum, and Lime Soup

Ingredients

1 tablespoon Olive Oil

1 large Onion

1 clove of Crushed Garlic

1L Chicken Stock (Vegetable stock works great also)

4 Red Capsicums deseeded and chopped, OR 600 grams frozen Red Capsicums

1 small red Chilli or ½ teaspoon Chilli powder (this is approx, it depends on what heat level you like)

3 tins of tinned 400 gram tomatoes OR one 2L ice cream container of frozen homegrown tomatoes

1 Tablespoon of tomato puree (This is purely optional. It depends on how tasty the tomatoes are in the recipe. My advice is to do the recipe up to step 4 without the tomato puree, and do a taste test, and if it’s not tomatoey enough, then try adding tomato puree by the tablespoon)

1 Lime – Juice + Zest

Salt and Pepper to taste

Recipe

(1) Cook chopped onion and garlic gently in olive oil in a covered pot for approximately 5 minutes until softened, stirring occasionally.

(2) Stir in chopped capsicum, chilli, tomatoes, and chicken stock. Bring to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes.

(3) Puree the mixture with a stick blender until smooth.

(4) Do a taste test once the soup is at a smooth consistency, to see if tomato puree needs to be added. Add the juice and zest of the lime.

(5) Simmer for 10 minutes, and then do a taste test to see if salt and pepper is needed. Add salt and pepper and simmer for 5 more minutes.

(6) Enjoy the soup straight away, or freeze if you have any excess. This recipe gives approximately 4 - 6 serves depending on how big your soup bowl is.

This soup recipe, is my favorite of all time, and I look forward to eating it each autumn and winter. We usually have it with toasted ciabatta and a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese, but it is wonderful just on it's own. I usually also make a double batch, so that we have plenty of this soup over winter whenever I have a hankering for it. I hope you give this wonderful soup a go, and please let me know what you think of the recipe...

Have a wonderful day

Julie-Ann

Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.

Tags: 2024, Capsicums, Food, Food Processing, Gardening, Harvest, Harvesting, Homegrown Food, Lime, Recipe, Soup, Tomato, Tomatoes, Vege Garden, Vegetables, Winter, Winter Solstice