Chill Soups Quickly: Cooling Ice Paddles

This is one of the tools that restaurants use to cool down huge pots of stock and other hot foods when they're not going to be used right away. With all the soup we've been making lately, we're thinking about picking one up for ourselves!

Using an ice paddle cools food down much more quickly than simply letting them cool on their own or even setting them over an ice bath. It's not good to put very hot food directly into the refrigerator because it will make the fridge warm up - along with the rest of the fridge contents - faster than the fridge can cool it down. If food stays too warm for too long, it will start to spoil.

Ice paddles are made of sturdy food grade plastic, meaning they can interact with hot food without melting or releasing any harmful chemicals into the food. You fill them with regular water and leave them in the freezer until you need them. The smooth plastic is also easy to clean, and many of them are even dishwasher safe.

For home use, look for the smallest sized ice paddles - usually 64 ounces (or 2 quarts). They're readily available and affordable at any restaurant supply store or online:

• San Jamar Rapi-Kool Cold Paddle, $20 from Wasserstrom

You can also make your own using a leftover plastic water bottle, though we recommend waiting until the soup is no longer boiling hot before using it since commercial water bottles aren't made of the same grade of plastic.

(Image: Wasserstrom)

Comments (12)

Heavy duty bottle filled with salted ice water. Give it about 5 minutes.

I use my immersion chiller (runs cold water through 50' of copper tubing). I know this isn't something everyone has readily available, but my fellow homebrewers should have one, and have hopefully discovered everything you can use it for!

Wouldn't a stainless steel water bottle work just as well and without the questions of leaching plastic?

I use my immersion chiller too. It will chill way quicker than a ice paddle could.

Hmmm. transfer to a metal bowl. cool original bowl (under cold water) and return to original bowl. Cool metal bowl and then return to cooled metal bowl... You can repeat these steps as you feel necessary - it doesn't take so much time really. Add a sealed ziploc bag full of ice...

I leave cauldrons of soup on the counter until it is cooled to room temp, then put it in the fridge. Simple.

That is why I love making soup and stocks in the dead of winter. At night when I am ready to put them away I cover them well and stick them on the porch. Some nights I might as well be putting it in a blast chiller.

@saramom - I think that's a great idea!

If you're making stock, pour it into your chilled ice cream bucket, 2 quarts at a time. 5 minutes later it'll be below room temperature, and you can put in two more quarts. It works for 4-5 batches in a row and can cool a huge pot of stock to go in the fridge in about 15 minutes.

This is amazing! I never knew such things existed :D :D Thanks for this!

I use stainless steel drink mixers - the tall steel tumblers used to mix drinks, to chill my stock. I fill them with ice, salt and water and place in my pot. I have 3, so I spread them around the pot evenly. (I usually use a fairly shallow pot, so this works, but if you use a tall one, obviously you'd have to make sure that the mixer is taller than the level of soup/stock). I usually do this in addition to placing in the sink with cold ice water. This cools it down quickly out of the danger zone, and then the drink mixers can be dropped in the dish washer. In winter, I place it on the deck to cool if it is cold enough.

What are the dimensions on the cooling paddle? The 64 ounce one. Trying to see if it will fit in my freezer.