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With all the hot weather much of the country has been experiencing, we thought we’d suggest a gazpacho, a chilled soup, one that you can make quickly, with minimal use of the stove.
Not all gazpachos are made with tomatoes. White gazpacho is a classic dish from Spain, earlier versions dating back to when the Moors controlled Andalucia.
This version is made with bread, blanched almonds, green grapes, cucumbers, olive oil, and garlic. Odd combination you might think, but let me assure you, it truly is delicious.
There’s no dairy. The soup gets body and protein from the blanched almonds. The bread acts as a thickener. The cucumbers are wonderfully cooling.
White Gazpacho Recipe
The recipe calls for stale bread because this soup is an excellent use of old bread that is too hard to eat. Sometimes when we buy freshly baked bread we don't eat it all, and the leftovers get dry and hard within days. We keep the bread to make breadcrumbs. So, this is what you would typically use.
If you don't have any old bread lying around, you can use white bread, with the crusts removed. Use a good quality white bread, such as a French or Italian loaf.
Ingredients
- 2 cups of crustless stale bread, broken into pieces
- 2 cups chicken or vegetable stock (use vegetable stock for vegan or vegetarian version)
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 1 cup slivered blanched almonds (must be blanched, the skins are bitter)
- 2 cups green seedless grapes, sliced in half
- 2 cucumbers, peeled, seeded and chopped
- 1-3 chopped garlic cloves (depending on how garlicky you want the result to be)
- 2-3 tablespoons sherry vinegar or cider vinegar
- 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
- Chives for garnish
Method
1 Heat stock, add bread: Heat the stock until it's steamy. Turn off the heat and add to the stock the broken up pieces of stale bread. Let cool.
2 Grind almonds with salt and garlic: Put the almonds, salt and garlic in a food processor and pulse until the almonds are pulverized.
3 Add bread, stock, grapes, and cucumbers, purée: Add the soaked bread and any stock that was not absorbed by the bread into the food processor, then add the grapes and cucumbers. Pulse until the mixture is a rough purée.
4 Add vinegar: Add 2 tablespoons of the vinegar and pulse a few seconds to combine. Taste and add the other tablespoon if it needs it – grapes can sometimes be acidic enough to leave out the final tablespoon of vinegar.
5 Drizzle in olive oil while food processor is running: With the motor running, drizzle in the olive oil. Turn off the motor and taste the gazpacho. Add more salt if needed.
Chill before serving, garnish with chopped chives.
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Elise Bauer is the founder of Simply Recipes. Elise launched Simply Recipes in 2003 as a way to keep track of her family's recipes, and along the way grew it into one of the most popular cooking websites in the world. Elise is dedicated to helping home cooks be successful in the kitchen. Elise is a graduate of Stanford University, and lives in Sacramento, California.
White Gazpacho
Hi, about to make the soup. Does the size of the cucumbers matter?
Good question, Lin! I’m going to guess the cucumbers would ideally be 6-7 inches long, or 15-18 centimetres. Just eyeball it, I think you’ll be good. If the sou is too thick, you can always adjust with a little water.
Hi Elise,
thanks for all your wonderful work – this is my favorite website to find recipes! My question is, can I use brown bread for this soup? Thanks!
I haven’t made it with brown bread but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. The result might be a little less white.
Mine turned out beautifully, thanks for a grand recipe! South African summers are killer hot, and this was exactly what was called for. I served it with 3 different kinds of bruschetta to bulk up the meal- delicious!
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I made this as an appetizer for lunch today, exactly as written. It was outstanding. Thanks for another winning recipe!
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It’s interesting seeing some of the comments that ajo blanco is not considered a gazpacho. When we were in Andalucia back in 2001 and had this dish in Cordoba, they told us it was a white gazpacho. Now, granted, perhaps they were simplifying it for us foreigners’ sake, but fact is, actual real live Andalucians called it white gazpacho for us.
And whatever it’s called, it’s hella delicious. We need to make it again. Thanks for the prompt.