The best Spanish food and drink to keep you cool during the summer heat
The Local - [email protected] •
28 Jun, 2021
Updated Mon 28 Jun 2021 12:44 CEST
spanish summer food
If the summer heat is making you lose your appetite, these delicious Spanish food and drink specialties will help fill you up whilst keeping you cool. ¡Buen provecho! (Enjoy your meal).
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Though you might not feel like eating a lot when the weather is so warm, some Spanish food and drink can have an amazing cooling effect, from fresh, chilled gazpacho to icy, refreshing granizado.
While outside of the Iberian peninsula, soup tends to be reserved for the coldest of months, Spaniards have their own ideas about food. Gazpacho is a soup served cold, traditionally made of tomatoes, cucumbers, garlic. Look out for modern versions with a twist, such as Gazpacho with a hint of watermelon.
Sometimes called "white gazpacho", this cold garlic soup is popular in Andalusia in southern Spain. In Málaga, it is often served with fresh fruit like apples or melons.
This cold summery potato salad dish comes from Cádiz in southern Spain. It's prepared with onions, parsley, sherry vinegar and usually topped with slices of hard-boiled egg.
Much like its sister dish, gazpacho, this cold soup graces the menu of many a Spanish restaurant during the summer. It's thicker and creamier than gazpacho and is often served, as pictured, with bits of serrano ham and hard-boiled eggs on top.
Salpicón de marisco
Photo: JaulaDeArdilla/Flickr
Translating to seafood medley, this Spanish dish is made with diced or minced tomatoes, onions, prawns and other seafood.
This cool drink is made in different ways depending on whether it's in Spain or Latin America. The Spanish beverage is typically extracted from chufas, or tigernuts, and mixed with water and sugar for a sweet, creamy flavour.
If you’re desperate to try Spanish specialty and Christmas favourite, turrón, but also need a cooling fix, why not mix the two by sampling the nougat-like snack in ice-cream form? A popular flavour in Spanish heladerías (ice-cream shops), you'll have no problem finding this very Spanish summery treat wherever you might be in the country.
This mixture of red wine and lemonade (or casera, a sweetened soda water) is best served on a terraza and only ever ordered in the hottest months of the year. While tourists stick to sangria, tinto de verano is a much more authentic summer drink among Spaniards, and is guaranteed to quench that summer thirst.
Café con hielo
Photo: Gemunique / Flickr Creative Commons
Need your caffeine fix but can't stand the thought of a hot drink? Don't panic! Order your coffee just the way you like it but with a side of ice. It's an art to tip the hot drink into the ice-filled glass (never the other way round) without spilling it across the table but for coffee addicts, it's one worth mastering.
Watermelon
Photo: Fiona Govan
Juicy, thirst-quenching and refreshing, sandia, to use the Spanish name, are the perfect treat to cool you down on a hot afternoon. Guaranteed to put a smile on the sweatiest face!
Photo: josealoly / Flickr Creative Commons
Photo: JaulaDeArdilla/Flickr
Photo: Juan Carlos Mejía / Flickr Creative Commons.
Basically a Spanish version of a slushee or a snow cone, these freezing cold beverages come quite in handy when the mercury starts to rise.
Helado de turrón
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