How to Cool Down Leftovers, Fast - Bon Appetit

When I worked in restaurant kitchens, cooling down leftovers was serious business. The importance of getting big batches of cooked food—think giant pots of stocks, sauces, and stews—out of what’s known as the “danger zone” (40°–140°) as quickly as possible before getting it into the refrigerator was drilled into every cook on the line. This was a matter of food safety, enforced by the ever-present fear of a surprise health inspection; if the inspector showed up and dipped their dreaded thermometer into a container of 90° beans in the walk-in, your day was about to get a whole lot worse.

For home cooks, who are usually cooking in much smaller quantities that cool down much more quickly, this isn’t as big of a concern. The FDA recommends putting most leftovers in the fridge as soon as possible, and definitely within two hours, rather than waiting for them to reach room temp. That said, there are still times when I find myself staring down a stockpot of broth or a hulking Dutch oven of chili and I want to cool it down rapidly to avoid getting burned and/or raising the temperature of everything else in my fridge. In these cases I use a handy tool I learned about in restaurants years ago: an ice paddle.

Ice paddles are commonplace in professional kitchens and are essentially little more than giant refillable tubes made from food-grade plastic. They get filled with water, capped, and frozen, and then can be placed in a vessel of hot food to speed up the cooling-down process. (You can also wield them like frosty medieval weapons if you want, but that’s a different story.)

At home I obviously don’t have a need for something quite so large, but I can accomplish the same thing with clean quart containers I’ve filled with water and frozen. I try to keep a few of these bad boys stashed in the freezer so that they’re always ready to go, and then all I have to do is plop one directly into a big pot of soup and stir it around occasionally while I tidy up the kitchen. After 45 minutes or so the food in question is no longer piping hot and I can let the fridge do the rest of the work.

And while this use-case might seem a bit rare, I find that having quart-size blocks of ice in the fridge can be useful in other ways too. I basically always forget to make simple syrup until I’m jonesing for a cocktail, so I often use one of these DIY ice paddles to cool it down rapidly before adding it to a batch of margaritas. (Yes, I could use an ice bath—but then I’d be wasting all of those precious cubes I need for the drinks.) I’ve also used them when I’ve made a batch of punch or large-format cocktail and forgotten to make an ice mold—just warm the quart container under some hot water until the chunk of ice releases and drop that ’berg right into your Big Drink. And they’re always ready to function as an ice pack for a small cooler or to soothe a pesky bug bite, burn, or minor sprain.

See for yourself: Stash an ice paddle or two in your freezer and you’ll be surprised how often they come in handy.

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How to Cool Down Leftovers, Fast - Bon Appetit
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