Gordon Ramsay chilled cucumber soup is cucumber and yogurt blended raw, sieved smooth and served cold. Nothing is cooked at any point. It serves four as a starter and takes twenty minutes, most of that peeling.
The recipe is from Cooking for Friends. He calls it the thing for a hot balmy day, and says a little horseradish cream brings it alive without being compulsory.
Three cucumbers do two jobs. Two get diced for the purée, and the third is peeled into long ribbons and dressed separately to sit on top.
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Gordon Ramsay Chilled Cucumber Soup
Course: StarterCuisine: BritishDifficulty: Easy4
servings20
minutes30
minutes160
kcal50 min
A no-cook first course from Cooking for Friends. Cucumber blended raw with yogurt and pressed through a sieve, served cold under dressed cucumber ribbons and dill, with optional horseradish stirred through.
Ingredients
3 large cucumbers, about 680g each (1½ lb each), straight from the fridge
Lemon juice, to taste
1 tbsp olive oil
A handful of fresh dill, leaves roughly chopped, plus fronds to garnish
2 cups plain yogurt
1 to 2 tbsp creamed horseradish, to taste (optional)
Sea salt and ground black pepper
Directions
- Dice two cucumbers: Peel all three cucumbers. Cut two of them lengthways into quarters, slice the seedy core off each quarter, then chop the flesh into dice. Tip into a large bowl and set aside.
- Make the ribbons: Peel the third cucumber into long thin ribbons with a swivel peeler, cutting them in half if they seem too long. Put them in a separate bowl.
- Dress the ribbons: Toss the ribbons with a little lemon juice, the olive oil, the chopped dill, and salt and pepper. Cover and keep in the fridge until you serve.
- Blend in two batches: Put half the yogurt, a pinch of salt, some pepper and half the diced cucumber into a blender. Blitz to a smooth purée.
- Sieve it: Press the purée through a fine sieve, pushing down hard with the back of a ladle. Throw away the pulp left behind. Repeat with the remaining cucumber and yogurt.
- Season and chill: Taste the purée and adjust, adding horseradish or a squeeze of lemon as you like. Cover and refrigerate until properly cold.
- Serve: Pour into chilled bowls and top with the dressed cucumber ribbons and a few dill fronds.
Notes
- The cucumbers go in straight from the fridge, since nothing here gets cooked or cooled afterwards and the starting temperature is what you serve. Ramsay’s cucumbers are the large American kind at about 680g each, so you may need four ordinary British ones to reach the same weight. Calories are worked out from the ingredients.
FAQs
Why cut the seedy core out of the cucumber?
The seedy middle is where most of the water sits, and it would thin the soup and dull the flavour. You quarter each peeled cucumber lengthways and slice that core away before dicing the rest.
Only the two cucumbers going into the blender need it. The third gets peeled into ribbons, where the core comes away naturally as you go.
Why blend it in two batches?
Half the yogurt with half the cucumber, then repeat. A blender filled to the top does not circulate properly, so some of it purées while the rest stays in pieces.
Two smaller batches blitz evenly and go through the sieve faster. It also lets you taste and adjust the second batch if the first came out too thick.
Do you have to sieve the soup?
Yes, and push hard with the back of a ladle. Cucumber skin and fibre stay behind as pulp, and what comes through is silky in a way a blender alone cannot manage.
Throw the pulp away. It has given up everything worth having, and stirring it back in undoes the whole point of sieving.
Is the horseradish worth adding?
Ramsay says it brings the soup alive, but marks it optional and notes that leaving it out keeps things subtle and light.
Add it at the tasting stage, not before. One to two tablespoons of creamed horseradish goes into the whole batch. Cucumber and yogurt are mild enough that it moves from warmth to dominance fast.
How does this compare to his other chilled soups?
The gazpacho is also uncooked, but it marinates first and uses stale bread for body. The chilled melon soup goes sweet, with a sugar syrup rather than anything savoury.
This one is the plainest of the three. No acid beyond lemon, nothing thickening it but yogurt, which is exactly why the horseradish is offered.
Can you make chilled cucumber soup ahead?
The purée, yes. Cover it and keep it refrigerated, and it holds a day comfortably. Give it a stir before serving, since yogurt and cucumber water separate as they sit.
Dress the ribbons on the day. Lemon juice and salt draw water out of cucumber, so ribbons left overnight go limp and weep into the bowl.
