Chicken Soup: a primer

Tis the season for chicken soup! Baby it's cold outside and a nice warm bowl of soup is just what a person craves. Of course in my neck of the woods it seems like everybody is staying home with sick kiddos. Since you've got to take the time off why not make them something healing? Besides, chicken leg quarter sections were on sale . . . we'll discuss my food hoarding tendencies later.

To make a plain jane style soup you'll need the following items

Of course you can make a passable chicken soup with just chicken, water, and salt but this is AMERICA and we have different standards for our soup. Start off with a nice large pot and . . .

stick the chicken in! I'm using three whole chicken leg quarters. I pick leg quarters because they're full of dark meat, bone, and connective tissue. The trinity of stock making! Cover them with some . . .

nice cold tap water.  I like to add a couple teaspoons of salt at this point.  I want my chicken meat to be well seasoned you see.  It makes it taste "chickenier." Now for some more flavors! I like to create some balance in my food and that means it needs to hit all the spots on our tongue.  We can taste sour, sweet, bitter, salty and umami(meatiness). So far we've only covered salt and umami. Who will rescue us? Where are our sour, bitter and sweet?  To whom shall we turn? . . .

Our "sour" player today is some nice dry vermouth! Sure you could use plain old white wine but so many of the cheaper whites are sweet and cheap sweet wine has this tendency to turn a little funky in food. No funkiness allowed in chicken soup! Dry vermouth is actually nice and "dry"--no sweetness here, and it has a herbal quality of its own. The price can't be beat either!  Bonus, if you have it on hand you're always ready to produce martinis! I just love multifunctional liquor, don't you? But what about our other tastes? What about bitter? Do we really need bitter? YES! Our bitter will be a tag team production today . . .

Here's the "aromatics" to our rescue. Celery, parsley, and onion.  I wash them up and cut them up just enough to fit nicely in the pot. I want them to be easy to fish out of the broth afterward.  I leave the skin on the onion because I'm lazy. Why take unnecessary steps? Besides that nice onion skin will naturally add to the beautiful yellow color of the broth! The second half of the "bitter" team . . .

Da HERBS! Well technically the garlic is an aromatic but it fits so nicely on the plate with the herbs! I've got some dried thyme, a lovely bay leaf, salt and pepper, and some garlic.  Now I wanted to just have the lovely rounding of flavor a little garlic adds without a pronounced garlic flavor.  So I took a head of garlic that I had used all of the really nice large cloves off of and just washed it up and sliced it in half.  I think most people wouldn't of even been able to identify garlic as an ingredient but they'd miss it if it wasn't there! Besides, garlic is good for you and this is supposed to be a nice healing soup.  A few ginger root coins would be lovely at this point too but I just wasn't in the mood today.  Now everybody into the pool . . .

Check your water level, we don't want anybody left out of the broth! Turn the heat up high and bring it all to a boil. Then turn it down to a simmer and cook it for an hour if you're in a hurry, 2 hours if you're feeling lazy. Did I mention you could put all of these things in a crockpot at night and cook it on low while you sleep?

While the stock is simmering go ahead and prep your vegetables you want to eat in the soup.  We stuck with the classic carrots and peas. About a cup of peas and 2 cups of carrots. These will add that "sweetness" we're looking for to make the soup a delicious taste treat! When your broth is done simmering. It's time to get to work!

You need to get everything you put into the broth, out of the broth now . . .

Get those old aromatics out too. They're cooked to death by this point and sort of limp and unvegetably! They may go to their rest now knowing they fought the good fight . . .

Take the chicken meat off the bone and discard the bones, skin and any of those other unidentifiable lumps of "stuff." Cut the goodness into bite size pieces that'll fit your spoon nicely. Now to make your soup . . .

If your broth looks a little oily, go ahead and ladle the fatty parts off, a fat separator works really well for this if you've got one. You could also stop cooking at this point, throw the broth in the fridge over night and just peel off that fat before you make soup. The options are limitless!

Bring the broth to a boil and add the carrots. You want to cook them for about 5 minutes. They won't be "done" yet but that's okay, you still have noodles to cook!

Add your yummy noodles and cook them for about 3-5 minutes . . .

Add your peas and chicken and bring it to a simmer again.  Check the salt level, add some if it needs it. You're ready to serve!

Soup! It's what's for dinner!!!  I often like to add a couple slices of ginger root to this soup just for kicks! My German relatives from South Dakota garnish their soup with cinnamon! President George Washington actually enjoyed a little peanut butter stirred into his soup!  Go crazy with it!

Chicken Noodle soup

3 chicken leg quarters

1 tablespoon salt

water

1/4 cup dry vermouth

1 yellow onion, sliced in half

4 stalks of celery

4-5 small cloves garlic

8-12 stalks flatleaf parsley

1 1/2 tsp dried thyme leaves

1 bay leaf

1/2 tsp ground black pepper

2 cups sliced carrots

12 oz. pakage egg noodles

1 cup frozen peas

Place chicken, 2 teaspoons of salt, vermouth, onion, celery, garlic, parsley, thyme, bay leaf and pepper in a large pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil, then turn down to a simmer.  Simmer for 1-2 hours.  Strain broth. Remove chicken meat from the bone and chop into bite size pieces.  Bring broth to a boil and add carrots.  Simmer for 5 minutes.  Add noodles to boiling broth and cook 3 minutes.  Add chicken and peas to soup and simmer until they're warm.  Test soup for salt and add more if necessary.