Making your own delicious Watermelon Gazpacho
Watermelon gazpacho usually disappoints with savory flavors overpowering the sweet watermelon, or the sugary fruit drowning out the other flavors. This recipe gets it just right. Leave out the watermelon juice, add some cumin and serve this as a salsa over fried fish tacos.
In this video, chef and story-teller Jonathan Bardzik demonstrates how to grow and cook with award-winning All-America Selections winning varieties. A printable recipe card is below.
Watermelon Mini Love
This personal-sized Asian watermelon is perfect for smaller families and smaller gardens. Each watermelon has a high sugar content resulting in sweet and crisp, juicy flesh.
Tomato Midnight Snack
A unique indigo-type cherry tomato that ripens to red with a beautiful glossy black-purple overlay when exposed to sunlight. It is great in salads or eaten straight off the plant.
Basil Dolce Fresca
Great for gardeners looking for drought-tolerant, hearty plants, foodies interested in a new and better basil, and anyone who wants that great Mediterranean taste added to their cuisine.
Pepper Chili Pie
A unique miniature Bell Pepper that is mildly hot when fruits turn red and are compact, easy to grow, and adapt well to a container or small garden planting.
Watermelon Gazpacho
Ingredients
- 1 Mini Love watermelon seeded and diced, about 6 cups
- 1 quart Midnight Snack cherry tomatoes quartered
- 1 red onion finely diced
- 1/2 tsp lime zest
- 2 tbs lime juice
- 2-3 Chili Pie peppers seeded and finely diced
- 2 tbs Dolce Fresca basil finely chopped
- 1/4 cup Pomegranate or red wine vinegar
- 2 tbs honey
Instructions
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Mix together 4 cups Mini Love watermelon, Midnight Snack tomatoes, and onion.
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Add lime zest and juice, Chili Pie pepper and Dolce Fresca basil.
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Press remaining 2 cups of watermelon through a food mill or puree in a food processor and strain out solids.
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Season to taste with vinegar, salt, pepper and honey. The salt brings out the flavors in the tomato and the honey make the watermelon pop. You’re looking for a good fruity, vegetal balance.
“This post is provided as an education/inspirational service of All-America Selections. Please credit and link to All-America Selections when using all or parts of this article.”
AAS Winners
In step 3, am I keeping the liquid of the solids? Strain out the solids sounds like we’re only to keep the liquids?
Hi Betty! In step 3 you are juicing the remaining watermelon and discarding the few remaining solids. I like my gazpacho to have enough liquid to be a soup and not just feel like watery salsa. To punch up the watermelon flavor in this soup I juice some watermelon and use that for the extra liquid. Since watermelons are 92% water there will not be very many solids left behind.
If you do not have a food mill, you can puree the watermelon in a blender or food processor and strain the juice through a fine mesh sieve.
Thank you for your question!
Jonathan Bardzik