Cucumber

Cucumber Melon Soup From Chef José Andrés

by:
July  3, 2024
4
2 Ratings
Cucumber Melon Soup From Chef José Andrés
Photo by © 2024 by Thomas Schauer. Courtesy of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
  • Prep time 40 minutes
  • Serves 4
Author Notes

This summer soup is easy to play with and a great way to cool off on hot nights. If you like it more herbaceous and less sweet, add more cucumber and less melon, and maybe blend in some basil or parsley leaves. If you like the puree to be creamier, add more of the yogurt to the blender and use less as a garnish. Keep it cold in your refrigerator and serve it up in chilled glasses. We call this dish Cretan Cucumber Soup on our menu due to a garnish of crushed dakos or paximadia, which are traditional barley rusks from Crete. These dense croutons are found in bakeries all over the island and are often topped with chopped fresh tomatoes and feta, but we love the texture and flavor they add to this sweet, creamy soup. Look for them at specialty grocers and online. But don’t worry if you can’t find them: pita chips also work very well.

Text © From Zaytinya by José Andrés. Copyright © 2024 by José Andrés Media. Excerpted by permission of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

—Food52

What You'll Need
Ingredients
  • 1 English cucumber
  • 1 lime
  • 1 honeydew melon (about 5 pounds)
  • 1 bunch fresh mint
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried mint
  • 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons Greek Yogurt, divided
  • 1/2 cup pita chips or dakos, broken into 1/2-inch pieces
  • 1 pinch Aleppo pepper
  • Flaky sea salt
  • Extra-virgin olive oil, for drizzling
Directions
  1. Peel the cucumber, halve lengthwise, and remove any seeds. Finely dice one half of the cucumber and set the other half aside. You want about 1 cup of diced cucumber. Put the diced cucumber in a bowl and zest the lime over the top with a Microplane.
  2. Remove the rind from the melon by first cutting off the top and bottom, exposing the flesh. Stand the melon cut side down on a cutting board and remove the rind with a sharp knife, slicing from top to bottom all around the melon to remove it in strips; make sure to trim away all the rind. Halve the melon, scoop out the seeds, and discard. Finely dice 1 cup of the melon and add to the diced cucumber. Set the remaining melon aside.
  3. Divide the mint leaves in half. Thinly slice half the leaves and leave the other half whole. Add the sliced mint leaves to the bowl of diced melon and cucumber. Stir to combine, then cover and refrigerate.
  4. Chop the remaining melon and cucumber and put into a blender. Add the mint leaves, dried mint, and 2 tablespoons of the Greek yogurt. Juice the zested lime into the blender, then puree until totally smooth, about 3 minutes. Strain the puree through a fine-mesh sieve into a pitcher or container and refrigerate until cold, about 20 minutes.
  5. When ready to serve, spoon 1/4 cup of Greek yogurt into four serving bowls, then divide the chilled diced cucumber and melon among the bowls. Remove the chilled soup from the refrigerator. Stir the soup briskly if any separation occurred, then pour the chilled soup into each bowl and top with pita chips or dakos. Sprinkle with Aleppo pepper and flaky sea salt, then drizzle with olive oil.
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  • Linsey Sowa
    Linsey Sowa
  • Momo
    Momo
  • Mardel Fehrenbach
    Mardel Fehrenbach

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3 Reviews

Momo
Momo August 11, 2024
Lovely, refreshing summer soup. I used cantaloupe rather than honeydew, because that’s what I had. I followed instructions to peel the cucumber and remove the seeds, and then to strain the puree, but next time I’ll leave the peels and seeds, and remove the unwanted pulp by straining it. There otherwise was nothing at all to strain out, and doing all three steps seemed unnecessary. The soup was very pretty with the fruit and mint garnish. It was good and easy to make.
 
Mardel F.
Mardel F. July 12, 2024
I recently made this soup even though the honeydew melons in the market were neither terribly ripe nor fragrant. I picked the best I could. Nonetheless, the pureed soup itself was quite good. I fudge and add a bit more lime juice than called for. The soup had perhaps more of a vegetal freshness than it would have had were the melon more fragrant, and it is possible the additional lemon would not have been needed with ripe fruit. I also did not bother to strain the soup as suggested, which would have been more elegant. The resulting soup was lovely and refreshing and I would certainly make it again. My only caveat would be that less than ripe honeydew melon adds nothing to the garnish, so I would skip that in the future when faced with a less than ideal melon. In fact this soup may be a good way to salvage an otherwise disappointing honeydew melon..
 
Linsey S.
Linsey S. July 13, 2024
Great info Mardel! Thank you for sharing. Planning to make this soup myself and will heed your suggestions!