This vibrant cold soup is a serious stunner, and the perfect antidote to summer’s heat. Roasting your own beets will yield the brightest color soup (throw them into the oven in an aluminum foil pouch—you can roast them days before using them), but packaged precooked beets will work in a pinch. Homa Dashtaki, the author of cookbook Yogurt & Whey and founder of handcrafted yogurt company The White Moustache, prefers an immersion blender as it leaves some texture in the soup, but you can also use a standard blender. If you blend with abandon and the soup becomes too liquidy, just forgo the bowls and spoons and drink up!
