Setting Up the Ice Bath

• The ice bath cooling method involves immersing the pot or vessel of your hot food in a sink containing a mixture of ice and water, and stirring the food frequently so that all of it comes into regular contact with pot walls, which are cooler since they touch the ice bath. Fill your sink with a mixture of ice and water, and stir it so that the temperature of the water lowers to as close to 32 degrees Fahrenheit as possible. Visualizing the pot immersed in the ice bath, use enough ice and water to reach the level of the food in the pot.
  
  

Cooling the Food

• Set the pot or container containing your hot food in the ice water bath you have prepared. Recheck the level of the sink's ice water to be at least as high as the level of food inside the pot. Stir the food every 30 minutes, or more often, so different parts of the batch come into direct, regular contact with the sides of the container that, in turn, are in direct contact with the ice water. Add additional ice as it melts. Use a metal stem thermometer to closely monitor the temperature of the food you are cooling. Take the temperature from the slowly cooling center of the batch, rather than from the rapidly cooling edges. The temperature of the food should drop from 140 degrees to 70 degrees in no more than two hours and it should reach 41 degrees within four hours of the time it originally started to cool.