If you come to our house during the summer, chances are that you are going to find a big jug of Spanish Gazpacho in the fridge. If you still don't know, we are based in beautiful Mallorca, Spain. Our family is 50% Spanish (me) and 50% Irish (my husband). When it comes to making gazpacho, I take control of the kitchen!
We love summer for many obvious reasons and the food is one of them. So many fruits and vegetables are in season. Tomatoes, cucumbers and green peppers are some of them, and they are the main ingredients for our traditional Spanish Gazpacho. All the ingredients that are added into the gazpacho contain a really high amount of water. This is why you won't need to add much water to prepare this cold soup.
This dish can be served as a side dish, main dish or even as a drink. Is there something more refreshing than a glass of cold gazpacho?
Gazpacho it's served cold. You can leave it in the fridge for at least 2 hours before serving, or while blending all the ingredients, add a few ice cubes instead of the water to serve it immediately.
How to prepare the traditional Spanish Gazpacho
I don't think it can get much easier than this recipe. All you need to do is roughly chop the tomatoes, peppers, garlic, cucumber and onion and add the vinegar, water and olive oil. Season with salt and blend all the ingredients until you have a smooth cold soup. The ingredients are very similar to the Traditional Greek Salad, just this time you need to blend the ingredients!
There are quite a lot of variants to the traditional gazpacho, but the most important thing for a delicious gazpacho is the quality of the tomatoes. You will need juicy and tasty tomatoes for this gazpacho. Some other ingredients that will make your gazpacho be delicious are the extra virgin olive oil and vinegar.
Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Spain is the number one country in terms of good quality olive oil. Adding a good extra virgin olive oil makes a huge difference to the taste of your gazpacho. This is a good olive oil we use regularly.
Vinegar. It doesn't matter as much which vinegar you use but the quality of it. A good vinegar is all you need to bring the freshness into the soup.
Add some twists:
Bread. Most of the recipes you can find out there or in restaurants, contain bread. Our Gazpacho is 100% gluten-free as we don't include this ingredient in our recipe. I leave the bread for the Salmorejo, another Spanish cold soup.
Spices and nuts. I've seen people add cumin or almonds to the gazpacho. You can try if you want to give it a little twist, but we like to keep it simple and traditional when it comes to gazpacho.
Spanish Gazpacho
Ingredients
- 1 kg plum tomatoes
- 1 green pepper
- ¼ red bell pepper
- 1 garlic clove
- ¼ large cucumber
- ½ red onion
- 2 tablespoons vinegar
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- ¾ cold cup water
- Pinch of salt
Instructions
- Rinse the vegetables with cold water.
- Roughly chop the tomatoes, green pepper, bell pepper, garlic, cucumber and onion and add them into the food processor or blender.
- Blend until you have a perfectly smooth consistency. This can take a couple of minutes.
- Add the vinegar and olive oil and blend for another minute until all the ingredients are perfectly incorporated.
- While the blender is on, slowly add the cold water until you have the desired consistency.
- Add a pinch of salt before you stop the blender and your gazpacho will be ready to go.
- Refrigerate you a couple of hours before serving, as gazpacho needs to be eaten cold.
The dish is very unique I will try this at home.
Thank you! We hope you like it as much as we do!