Easy Soup Recipes: Cold Cherry Salmorejo Soup
I love a good cold soup in the summer. When it is hot outside, a cold, flavorful soup is the perfect remedy to the heat. With a nice salad and some crusty bread, or even a sandwich, a whole meal can be made without heating up the house. Plus, most cold soups are very easy to make.
The most classic cold soup is probably vichyssoise – a creamy and cold potato leek soup. The issue with vichyssoise is that you have to cook it and then cool it. Again, I like when I don’t have to heat up the house. Another classic is Gazpacho. I love a good gazpacho. When they invented Gazpacho in Spain, they really got it right. Sometimes it is nice to have something different, though. Sure, you can do Gazpacho a lot of different ways, but it always seems similar. It turns out, though that Spain has another secret cold soup called Salmorejo! This is another tomato based soup that has zero cooking involved in its making. Although it is traditionally flavored with only tomatoes, there is a popular twist on the recipe that makes it even more summery – Cherries! Yes, cherries! Another interesting part about Salmorejo, and other Spanish soups, is the use of old bread to thicken it. This is a classic technique for thickening and one that is very convenient as there seems to always be some leftover bread around. And, it is thickening without cooking! Excellent.
As easy soup recipes go, this is one of the easiest. Essentially, the ingredients just get blended up! Here is the recipe for Cold Cherry Salmorejo Soup…
- 10 ripe medium tomatoes
- 1/2 lb of cherries
- 4-5 slice of bread or the center of a baguette pulled out (you need about 1/4 lb of bread)
- 1/4 cup of olive oil
- ½ garlic clove
- Salt
- Cherries
- Grapes
- Pumpkin seeds
- Wash the cherries and remove the stems. Remove the pits with a cherry pitter or a knife and set aside.
- Wash the tomatoes and cut into irregular pieces.
- Blend the tomatoes and the cherries with a food processor or an electric stick blender until you get a fine puree.
- Chop the bread and mix it with the cherry and tomato puree.
- Set aside until the bread softens, add the chopped garlic clove and blend to produce a thick soup.
- Add a dash of olive oil and blend until it is emulsified. The texture will be softer and the color will turn into intense orange. Add salt and pepper to taste. If the result is too thick, add some water to the mix.
- Serve in a bowl and garnish with half pitted cherries, some grapes and pumpkin seeds.
- Salmorejo is a typical recipe from southern Spain that is traditionally eaten during summer served with Iberic ham and minced boiled egg. In this recipe, we added some cherries to soften the flavor and give it a deeper color. If you want to try the traditional recipe, you just need to replace the cherries with tomato.
- As for the toppings, you can try any ingredients you have on hand: croutons, diced pepper and cucumber or even chopped anchovies with pickled onion and gherkins.
Keep Eating! Keep Innovating!
Have you ever had Salmorejo Soup? Have any easy soup recipes to share? Let us know all about it in the comments or on Facebook.
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