Hot Chili & Cumin Gazpacho

I like dinners that are ready in five minutes. I also like dinners that cook themselves. This gazpacho ticks both of those boxes.

I won’t lie…I don’t LOVE gazpacho. I know its not soup, but it feels like it wants to be soup and I personally think that soup is a dish best served piping hot. I also really haven’t come across a lot of great gazpacho in my life. Most of the time I try it, I feel like I’m eating a bowl of watery salsa and WHY would anyone do that to themselves??? That being said, I literally can’t get enough tomatoes during the summer months (I put them on ev.er.y.thing.), and so I wanted to see if I could create a gazpacho that I actually enjoyed. It took some tweaking, but I did it.

This recipe is like, not NOT traditional, but it’s also not traditional…ya feel me? For starters, I didn’t use cucumber, which might be some cardinal gazpacho sin or something, but I wanted to avoid anything that would water down the soup, and since a cucumber is literally a cell wall and water, I figured it could ride the bench. I added cumin, which actually IS traditional, in parts of Spain, and I think it’s the secret ingredient to truly good gazpacho. It adds a smoky note to the dish that (in my opinion) is very necessary. I also used garlic powder instead of real garlic, because I wanted the concentrated flavor, and I threw some oregano in the blender, too, because I had it and I like oregano and there was no one around to stop me. I also added some heat (thanks, chili pepper paste) and an amount of sherry that’s probably on the liberal side for a gazpacho purist, but I think the tangy factor works really well in this (not) soup. Overall, I’m really happy with the results, traditional or not.

Here’s how you can have dinner on the table in 5 minutes flat.