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Chilled Soups Giving Soups the “Quick Chill”
In their own way, chilled soups in the summer also fulfill the definition of comfort food. They make you feel cooler and happier as you eat them, especially if you’ve got a glass of iced tea or chilled rosé nearby. While gazpacho began as an uncooked vegetable soup in Andalucía, its definition has now grown to include just about every purée one can combine in a food processor. One of the trends has been the mixing of melon and some berries and vegetables in these soups. But in addition to these soups of puréed raw ingredients there is a whole category of wonderful soups that are cooked and then chilled and served cold. Most of these come from classic French cuisine or were influenced by it, and some can trace their history back more than a century.
Time in the refrigerator is really all you need to chill a soup, regardless if it starts out hot or at room temperature. If it’s the latter, a few hours is all the time needed, and if it starts hot, then allow it to cool for an hour or so on the counter and then transfer it to the refrigerator. But if you are in a hurry to get the soup chilled there is a rather labor-intensive but efficient way to do it. While the soup is cooking, chill a metal mixing bowl in the freezer, and have a larger mixing bowl, into which the chilled one will fit, chilling too. Then you’re going to replicate the environment of an old-fashioned cranked ice cream maker by placing 2 trays of ice cubes and 1 cup rock salt in the larger bowl, and stirring the soup in the smaller bowl until it has chilled. You must be careful, however, as the ice melts that you do not inadvertently get salty ice water into your soup. If you have an electric ice cream maker with a metal insert that you keep in the freezer, you can also use the insert to help chill soups. It’s far less messy than the ice cube method, but you still have to do quite a bit of stirring to keep the liquid moving.
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