Saturday, October 2, 2010

Stuffed Pepper Soup

A couple of weeks ago, Mike had a stuffed pepper soup at our favorite restaurant and enjoyed the hell out of it.  Since we are about to embark on a few months of soup eating in this house and they're only open for dinner on Friday nights, adding a few more soups to the repetoir of things he will eat (chicken w/rice, chicken w/dumplings, black bean, french onion, split pea and ham, chili - that's it) is high on the priority list. 

3 large bell peppers (one red, one orange and one green)
2 medium onions
2qt's tomato juice
1.5lbs ground beef
3 cloves garlic
3 C chicken stock
1 t cumin
salt & pepper to taste
Parmesan to taste
Spice to taste (I used dried, homegrown super hots)
15 rosemary needles

Blacken the pepper skin in the bottom of the stock pot.  Remove and place in a bowl, wrapped in plastic, to sweat the skins off.  Remove the skins and dice.  Brown ground beef with salt, pepper and cumin.  Dice both onions.  Add onions and peppers into the beef and season with more salt and pepper, parsley (if dried) & crushed red pepper.)  Add garlic and rosemary.  Cook until the onions begin to turn translucent and the spices begin to perfume.  Add tomato juice and cook.  When the soup is almost done, add the chicken stock and the rice and cook until the rice is done through.  (This should thicken things up.)