Tip - Keeping Your Cool With Soups

Keeping Your Cool With Soups

Cooling heated soups safely need not be a mystery. Take guidance from 
James Peterson, whose revised and amplified "Splendid Soups" will be 
published next month by John Wiley & Sons. After making a hot soup, 
let it cool to room temperature for an hour, and then put it into the 
refrigerator. "If you put it in boiling hot, the soup will warm up 
the refrigerator and everything could spoil," he says. "The point is 
to keep it out of the bacteria range--40 to 140 degrees [Fahrenheit]."

For larger quantities than those usually required by home cooks, 
Peterson puts his soup into a very large pot, and then places a 
smaller pot filled with ice in the middle of the soup pot, a method 
that he says cools the soup more quickly than putting a small pot of 
soup into a larger pot of ice.

Winter, of course, provides different options. Says Peterson, "Then I 
just stick the pot of soup outside in the snow for a while."

A word of caution: remember to bring the pot inside the house or take 
it out of the refrigerator an hour so before serving. You want cool 
soups, not savory Popsicles.