Easy Gazpacho Recipe

Name: Easy Gazpacho Recipe
Total time: 45 min
Yield: 6
Ingredients: 6 ounces hearty bread, crusts removed, torn into 1- to 2-inch chunks; 3 pounds (about 4 large) very ripe tomatoes, cored and cut into rough 1-inch chunks; Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper; 1/2 pound (about 1 small) cucumber, peeled, seeded, and cut into rough 1-inch chunks; 1/3 pound (about 1 small) small red onion, peeled and cut into rough 1-inch chunks; 1/3 pound (about 1 medium) green or red bell pepper, cored, seeded, and cut into rough 1-inch chunks; 1/4 cup roughly chopped fresh oregano leaves; 2 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed; 1 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for serving; 2 tablespoons sherry vinegar, plus more to taste; Chopped herbs such as parsley, chives, or oregano for serving

Why It Works

The key to this super fast gazpacho is layering and salting the vegetables above the bread so that their exuded juices get sopped up before blending.
For silky smooth gazpacho, blend it on high speed and then strain through a fine-mesh strainer.

A couple of years ago, I produced what was possibly the most time consuming gazpacho recipe ever. It involved salting vegetables in advance to draw out flavorful internal liquids, freezing the vegetables to break down their cell structure, and puréeing them with bread soaked in vegetable juice and olive oil. It was damn delicious—the best gazpacho I know how to make!—but took in excess of two hours from start to finish. I admit it: It's not exactly the simple, rustic summer dish you want it to be.

That recipe follows what I call the 90/10 rule: When taking a dish from great to excellent, you have to put in 90% more work to make it 10% better. Sometimes, that extra effort is worth it; other times, I'll settle for great-not-perfect in order to save myself a couple hours in the kitchen.

Today, I'm going to share with you the version of gazpacho I make when I'm feeling lazy. Don't worry, it's still knock-your-socks-off tasty.

Ingredients for gazpacho on a large wooden cutting board: tomatoes, bread, garlic, oregano leaves, red onions, green bell pepper, and cucumber — Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt

Great gazpacho relies on excellent ingredients, so this is one part you definitely don't want to skimp on. Find the freshest, ripest, softest, brightest tomatoes you can, along with some great peppers (I used green bell for their grassy bitterness), a red onion, a cucumber, some garlic, and some herbs. In this case I went with oregano, but you can use any herb you'd like.

A close up of several tomatoes for gazpacho and a knife on a wooden cutting board. — Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt

Gazpacho, at its heart, is a bread- and olive oil-based soup, so those had better be good, too. The bread I used was San Francisco sourdough (throw out the crusts or save them for crumbs), and the olive oil was a Colavita's 100% California extra-virgin olive oil, which has a mild, buttery golden flavor.

Pieces of torn bread with crusts removed, in a large mixing bowl next to several tomatoes lying on a cutting board. — Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt

The key here is to make sure that every bit of flavor gets extracted from your ingredients. I do this by building things up in layers, starting with the torn-up bread at the bottom of a bowl.

A hand sprinkling salt onto tomatoes in a large steel mixing bowl with bread underneath. — Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt

Next I add a layer of sliced tomatoes and season them generously with salt. The salt will draw out flavorful liquid from inside the tomatoes, which will then drip down and saturate the bread, making it easier to purée in the end.

Chunks of red onion and cucumber in a large steel mixing bowl for gazpacho. — Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt

Next up is a layer of cucumber (I used a seedless English cucumber so I wouldn't have to bother seeding it), sliced garlic, green peppers, onion, and oregano leaves, sprinkled with more salt.

Another layer of salted tomato slices goes on top, along with plenty of olive oil. To give the salt a bit of time to work its magic, I let everything sit for just 30 minutes. Juices drip, bread gets soaked, flavors meld, things get happy.

Tossing all ingredients for gazpacho in a large steel mixing bowl with a wooden spoon. — Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt

Stir it all up just to distribute everything evenly, then load it into the blender in batches.

Gazpacho ingredients in chunks about to be blended in a blender. — Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt

If you don't mind a chunkier gazpacho, you can just blend until it comes together. I prefer mine to be silky smooth, so I let it blend on high speed for a full three minutes or so, adding in plenty of sherry vinegar and seasoning to taste with salt and pepper.

Pour it all through a fine-mesh strainer for ultimate smoothness.

Pressing blended gazpacho through a fine-mesh strainer with a ladle. — Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt

The easiest way to get soups and purées through a fine-mesh strainer is to press down using the back of a ladle. Forget the spatula!

And lunch is served. Start to finish, about 45 minutes. Is it perfect gazpacho? Nope. Is it 90% perfect gazpacho? Sure is, and that's a pretty darn high percentile if you ask me.

September 2013

This recipe originally appeared as part of the column "The Food Lab Turbo."