Conference turris::cooks

I make this when I feel a cold coming on...  This is a low-volume recipe,
good for "one cold", or 3 bowls.

First, steal a chicken  (sorry -- old joke!).
I perfer to use leg quarters, fat globs and all.  For the minimum size,
use one chicken's leg-quarter, with thigh, or two if they're small birds.
Put in a coverable pot (just large enough) and put in enough water to
cover about 2/3 of the way -- about 1 1/2 bowls of water.  (I measure
by the result, not the book.)

Take one small or half a large onion, slice, and throw into pot.  Add a
couple stalks of celery, a sliced carrot, and a small parsnip (cut into
1-2" chunks).  The parsnip makes it taste sweeter; quite nice.  I also
like to throw in one potato (cut into 1" cubes) or a little rice.  A
garlic clove also helps.

Heat to boil and simmer for a couple of hours.  Season with salt, paprika,
soy sauce (yep), dill, thyme, pepper, more garlic if you like.  Stir
periodically, so the chicken leg cooks evenly; split it up when it's
good and soft.  A buillion cube is cheating, but I've been known to do
it myself. (Please, the Herb-Ox kind, not the MSG variety!)

Before eating, skim off most of the fat layer.  This is best done after
it cools.

If you bake a chicken, the pan drippings should be saved in the fridge
to use as extra flavor when you make soup.  This recipe is almost
guaranteed to cure whatever ails you.

Fred

I Dont know how adept you are at cutting up whole chickens, but my recipe for
chicken soup starts with whole chicken.  I buy them whole then cut them up
for frying, etc.  Since I dont use the backs or neck section I throw this into
a pressure cooker.  Also add all the fat, wing tips, gizzard and heart (never
the liver as this makes the soup bitter).  You can add as many "bones" as you
want.  If making this with one chicken I use about four cups water.  

To the pot then goes:

 One whole onion, two carrots, two stalks celery, salt & pepper to taste,
 two whole bay leafs, dash of thyme, marjorom and sage.

 Cook for about twenty minutes.  When done, put pressure cooker under running
 cold water to relieve pressure, open pot and strain all broth into pot.

 Now what you have is chicken broth.  What you do next depends on your personal
 taste.  There will be a lot of (yellow) fat on top.  You can put this all into
 the 'frig for a few hours and skim off all the fat, or you can leave the fat
 on.  I usually take some of it out.

 Since I usually make a lot at a time and cant use it all at once, I've found
 that it freezes quite well.  I freeze it in ice cube trays, determine how
 many cubes to a cup, then transfer the cubes to a freezer bag.  Then when Im
 cooking something which calls for one cup broth, out come x number of cubes.

 No matter what combination of spices you use, or exactly which recipe you use,
 you just cant beat home made chicken soup.  Its nothing like store bought.

Enjoy,

Rickz

	I got this recipe from my mother in-law, who is Jewish, and has been 
making this chicken soup for Friday night dinner for around 15 years.

	She makes around 8 qts. so I give you that recipe, and you can
cut the recipe to what you what.

	Add to 8 qts. water the following items:

	10 drum sticks, 5 or so wings and necks.  Don't add fat not only 
	does it do nothing for the soup, but you just strain it off at the
	end anyway.  With the above there should be enough fat to give
	it taste.   Add about a 1 1/2 - 2 lb. of gizzards (include
	the liver, the livers give more taste to the soup).  If you want
	add bones, be my guest but the taste mostly comes from the meat.

	Add to the water two small, or one large whole onion,  4-5 stalks
	of celery, 3-4 whole carrots, 1-2 parsnips.  That's all.  She
	doesn't use seasoning because the veggies add that, and she 
	doesn't use salt because her husband has high blood pressure, but 
	if you like add salt to taste.

	Bring to a boil for 15 mins.  Reduce the heat and let simmer for 
	3-4 hours (the long you cook soup the more the flavors come out).
	Stir every so often so the veggies and meat cook evenly.
	
	At this point she takes the veggies out and puts them in a food
	processor to chop them up.  She takes all the chicken parts out,
	except the gizzards, and then replace the chop veggies back into
	the soup.  If you like you can remove the meat from the chicken
	parts, chop it up and return it to the soup.  At this point
	she makes noodles or rice, which she adds to the boils of soup.

I have been eating this soup for around 3 years now, and I have not
come across anything better.
 
						- Rick -

HERE'S MY CHICKEN SOUP:
1 WHOLE CHICKEN
3 OR 4 SLICED CARROTS
3 OR 4 SLICED CELERY STALKS
1 CAN CORN (NOT CREAMED)
1 PKG FROZEN PEAS
1 LARGE CAN WHOLE TOMATOES
ROSEMARY,SALT,PEPPER
.........PUT CHICKEN IN LARGE STEW KETTLE. COVER WITH EVERYTHING BUT
THE PEAS.  POUR WATER TO ALMOST THE TOP.  COVER AND BRING TO A FULL
BOIL (ABOUT 1/2 HOUR).  STIR, AND COOK FOR ANOTHER 10-15 MIN.  TAKE
CHICKEN OUT AND PULL APART ALL THE CHICKEN.  PUT BACK THE CHICKEN
INTO THE SOUP AND AT THIS TIME ADD YOUR PEAS.  COOK UNCOVERED FOR
ABOUT 10-15 MIN UNTIL PEAS HAVE A CHANCE TO SIMMER WITH THE SOUP.

IT REALLY IS SO GOOOOODDDDD!!!!!

    Boy am I impressed!  Although there is no such thing as a bad chicken
    soup recipie (this includes all the above), both Fred Goldsteins
    and Rick Jones' contain the magic (as far as I'm concerned) ingredient:
    parsnips.
    
    story: After I left home and started cooking for myself I couldn't
    understand why I couldn't make chicken soup as good as my mothers!
    So I confronted her and she gladly explained how to do it; one problem,
    however: two of the ingredients had names that I couldn't translate
    into anything at the produce market.  Well she grew up with parents
    who spoke little english; mostly yiddish.  These two ingredients
    she only knew by their yiddish names: and strangely enough she didn't
    even know that the words were not english words!  I actually got
    her to take me to the super-market and show me: PARSNIPS and DILL!
    
    As I see it including these two ingedients changes generic chicken
    soup (no putdown) into jewish chicken soup.
    
    /marty
    

    In the above recipies I noticed some differing opinions on three
    things, and herein I would like to add my two cents.
    
    liver vs no liver - personally I just as soon make chopped-liver!
    
    fat vs no fat - my rule is: any chicken fat that you can cut-off,
    			do so (but save it in a plastic bag in the
    			freezer (for chopped-liver)
    
    now the bigee:
    
    bones vs flesh - both!
    
    	it is not a true statement that the flavor comes from the flesh
    	alone: as I see it flavor is a multidimensional factor:
    
    		though the flesh gives the soup one type of flavor,
    		the bones give it another.  the type of flavor that
    		the bones give it I call DEPTH.  It is not possible
    		to describe this in words; but it is the characteristic
    		that differs store-soup from home-made soup
    
    /marty
    

    Does anybody roast the bones before making the stock?   I read
    somewhere (Jane Brody? Frugal Gourmet?) that this helps the flavor
    and color, but maybe it was just for beef stock??
    
    Thanks for the parsnip tip - I knew mine had something missing,
    but just couldn't place it!

    It was Julia Child that insisted you had to roast the bones to
    cook down the marrow or something.  She was making french onion
    soup and it looked like it would take a good 2 days to do everything
    she was doing.
    

Roast the bones if you want brown stock.

The best you will get with roasted chicken bones is tan.

The most dramatic color difference is with beef bones.

						     
							- JP

    This recipe is from the Fit or Fat system TARGET RECIPES book, by
    Covert Bailey and Lea Bishop.  The book has several other main-dish
    soup recipes, as well as recipes for many other types of foods.
    All the recipes are low fat - calories and fat content are specified.
    I've tried many of them, but have yet to try the following recipe.
    It sounds like a soup version of chicken and dumplings.  YUMMMMY!
    
    
    Pennsylvania Dutch Chicken and Corn Soup
    
    Before we modified this recipe by skinning the chicken, it had 430
    calories and 3 fats per serving. (1 fat = 5 grams or 45 calories)
    
    serves 6
    calories per serving: 290
        fats per serving: 1

    3 whole chicken breasts,	1 10 oz package frozen
      skinned and split		  chopped broccoli
    1 large onion, chopped	1 cup all-purpose flour
    8 cups water		1 tablespoon milk, low-fat
    1/2 tsp salt		  or skim
    1/4 tsp pepper		1 egg (you could use 1/4
    1 10 oz package frozen	  cup eggbeaters instead,
      whole-kernel corn		  to lower the cholesterol)

    Place chicken, breast side down, in a large saucepan; add
    onion, water, salt, and pepper.  Heat to boiling; reduce
    heat, cover, and simmer 35 minutes or until chicken is
    tender.
    
    Let chicken cool, remove the meat from the bones, and cut
    it into bite-sized pieces.  Skim off the fat from the broth,
    and heat the broth to boiling.  Add the chicken, corn, and
    broccoli.  Reheat to boiling.
    
    Meanwhile, mix the flour, milk, and egg in a small bowl with
    a fork.  With your fingers, crumble small pieces of the dough
    mixture into the simmering soup; reduce the heat to medium;
    cook, uncovered, for 5 minutes or until the drops of dough
    and veggies are tender.

    

    My mother-in-law makes the best chicken soup, but...the onions are
    tough!  Any idea how to remedy this?  She simmers a whole chicken with
    onions, carrots, and celery, then removes the chicken from the carcass
    and adds it back into the stock with wide egg noodles. I would think if
    they simmered too long they would get very soft, but the opposite seems
    to be true.  Would sauteing them first help? She uses your generic
    yellow onion.  Maybe a particular type of onion is needed? Other than
    plastic-like texture of the onions, her soup is the best!
    
    Sarah
    

    I've never had this problem with onions in soup, but sauteing them
    would make them softer.  I think white onions stay harder than yellow
    ones; I usually use those big yellow onions in soup - the little kind
    of white onions I grow in my garden don't get very soft when they are
    boiled.

re 16.

Have you considered green onions? It would give the soup a different aroma and
and a lightly different taste plus the problem of toughness would disappear.

If green onions is not particularly appealing then sauteing would solve your
problem. 

Basil.

    By all means saute the onions first.  They absorb a little of the
    butter or oil and stay nice and soft.

    Whenever I make turkey soup I have to add boullion cubes so that
    it has any flavor.  Is this because I am not cooking it long enough?
    (I usually cook it about 2 hours)  I use the carcass from a roasted
    turkey along with any of the greasy dark meat from the back and
    legs.
    	Linda

If you analyze the flavor you are talking about, you are actually adding salt,
tumeric, and maybe a little "poultry seasoning" type of herbs when you add
the boullion cubes.  These flavors quickly overpower the delicate flavor of
the poultry.  When making soup, use lots of bones/meat scraps.  Cook down for
several hours to get the flavor from the meat and bones -- I simmer the pot
of bones and meat scraps and veggies for approx. 3 hours, covered, on the
stove.  I then strain the broth through two layers of cheese cloth and chill
to make removal of the fat easy.  The flavorings I add to the pot are:

	1 generous handful of whole black peppercorns
	1 generous sized chunk fresh ginger, cut into chunks
	3 - 4 large carrots, cut into chunks
	3 - 4 stalks celery with tops, cut into chunks
	1 - 2 yellow onions, peeled and cut into chunks
	1 - 4 teaspoon poultry seasoning (depending on how much you are making)
	1 big bunch parsley cut into big pieces
	4-6 whole cloves garlic, peeled
	turkey or chicken bones/wings/darkmeat pieces and/or carcass and
	at least 4 uncooked turkey wings or 6 uncooked chicken wings
	(uncooked has much better flavoring ability than already cooked
	  meat)
	You can add a little tumeric to the broth to make it look like 
	  chicken broth - yellow.  I think you should add this after the
	  broth is strained.

Bring to a boil and drop temp to a simmer, cover pot allowing a vent and cook
over low heat for 3 hours.  Strain all solids out of the broth and discard.
I strain through 2 layers of cheesecloth.  Chill broth overnight.  remove
solid fat and discard.  Make soup by adding additional, uncooked chicken
to the broth and simmering until the chicken is cooked.  Add bite sized
pieces of veggies as well, remembering to add them in time to be cooked, but
not overcooked by the time the chicken is done.  Cook noodles in a separate
pot until done and drain. When the chicken is cooked, remove meat from 
bones, cut into bite sized pieces, return to broth with veggies/noodles and 
serve your soup.

Yes, I mean a real HANDFUL of the whole peppercorns.  They are quite mellow
when simmered in a big pot of water and bird pieces.  And the garlic is also
a mellow influence.  If I'm making my SUPER pot full of broth, I simply add
a whole bulb of garlic cloves, peeled and dropped into the pot whole.

Simple turkey stock:

take bones, skin, giblets and other scrap meat and place in a pressure cooker,
cover with water to a depth of 1 to 1.5" over the bones (larger bones should be
cracked with a hammer first). 

Using the 15lb weight on the valve, cook for 40 minutes. (If you don't have a 
pressure cooker, simmer for 3 hours).

Filter through a fine Chinois or several thicknesses of muslin to remove all
the bones.

Chill in the fridge and skim off the fat.

Return to the stove top and reduce to half its volume.

Any you don't use can be put in an ice cube tray and frozen into "turkey stock
cubes".

(similar techniques apply to chicken, fish and veggie stock: beef marrowbones 
should be dry roasted first).

/. Ian .\

    Sometimes when going from a standard salty diet to trying something
    with very little salt, the flavors don't balance properly for your
    palate.  Adding a bit of salt provides the balance you are used to. 
    You can still get by with lots less salt than is usually present in
    pre-salted ingredients.

>    Sometimes when going from a standard salty diet to trying something
>    with very little salt, the flavors don't balance properly for your
>    palate.  Adding a bit of salt provides the balance you are used to. 
>    You can still get by with lots less salt than is usually present in
>    pre-salted ingredients.

and, according to my doctor, you will end up adding approx. 60 percent LESS
salt to your diet if you COOK WITHOUT SALT (no salt in canned/frozen food,
etc.) and then salt to taste at the table when you eat.  Studies have shown
that this is a very effective way to reduce salt.

a side benefit to this approach is that your meats will be nice and tender.
When we add salt during cooking, we toughen the meats.

    When making our turkey soup, my family adds a cup to a cup and 1/2 of
    the leftover gravy.  This makes the soup darker in color and more
    flavorful. (After all the gravy is made from the drippings and a little
    onion.
    
    We also cook the bones, dark meat, carrots, celery and onions.
    
    Good luck,
    
    Karen
    
    P.S.  A sprinkly of parmesan cheese on the top adds to the flavor also.
    

    Here's one I clipped from a woman's magazine.  I make it once a month
    myself, and even though it's never lasted that long, I bet it freezes
    well.
    
    
    			Chicken and Barley Soup
    
    1-2 quarts chicken broth		1 tsp. salt (optional)
    1 small bay leaf			1 clove garlic, pressed
    1/2 tsp. dried marjoram		1/2 tsp. dried thyme
    1/4 tsp. pepper			16 oz. can stewed tomatoes**
    1/4 cup medium-size pearl barley*	1 large onion chopped
    2 carrots cut in 1/2 inch slices*	2 stalks celery cut like carrots*
    Leftover chicken or turkey.
    
    Combine chicken broth, barley, tomatoes, salt, garlic, bay leaf, marjoram, 
    thyme, and pepper in large sauce pan or soup pot.  Bring to boiling.  
    Lower heat and simmer for for 20 minutes.  Add onion, carrots, and
    celery.  Bring back to the boil, then lower heat and simmer for an
    additional 20 minutes or until vegetables are tender.  Stir chicken or
    turkey into soup, remove bay leaf, and heat just until poultry is hot.
    
    *Note:  I love barley, carrots, and celery, so I always put more into
    the soup than the recipe calls for.
    
    **The original recipe calls for a 16 oz. can of tomatoes, but I didn't
    have any on hand when I first made this recipe, so I used stewed
    tomatoes.  I have since made this soup using plain tomatoes, but I like
    it better with the stewed tomatoes.

Making chicken soup is fun until it's time to strain it.  Lately I've been 
putting a wet paper towel in a large colander and straining through that into 
another pot. It works OK, but is slow and makes a mess (the soup splatters 
all OVER the place!).

Does anyone have an better way? 

    I use a ladle to transfer the soup to a wire mesh strainer on top of
    another container.  This way I can keep the big pieces from splashing
    out.  I then pour the last bit from the pot into the strainer.  I tend
    to package the broth into smaller containers for freezing anyway, so
    the extra time involved in ladelling over pouring isn't that bad.
    
    Cheesecloth might be a better alternative to the paper towel.  It won't
    filter out quite so much as the paper towel which will make the
    transfer faster.  The cheesecloth is also much stronger than a wet
    paper towel.  Personally, I wouldn't bother with even the cheesecloth. 
    The colander would do the job well enough for me.  When I make broth I
    use whole veggies (onions, green pepper, garlic, carrots, etc) or at
    the most cut them in half.  This makes getting them out of the way that
    much easier.

get a big strip of kitchen-approved cheesecloth wet, wring it out, and
spread it, 3 layers deep, in a fine mesh collander.  Place the collander
over a deep narrow pot.  Keep additional cheesecloth handy.  Ladle the
chicken soup with stuff into the collander slowly so it can drain.
When the cheesecloth gets full of stuff, you can either discard it
with the stuff in it and re-line the collander, or you can discard the
stuff and keep the cheesecloth.  Drain all soup through the cheesecloth.

When done, chill the soup overnight and remove the hardened fat -- voilla!
you now have de-fatted chicken broth.

    Beware filtering with paper products that were not intended for
    filtering, some are processed with lead compounds.
    
    I read of the lead link concerning the processing of recycled papers
    and the making of papers such as the stuff we, ahhh kids in school,
    used for spit balls.
    
    ed
    

    A strainer/sieve would work better than a colander because the holes
    are smaller.  If you use cheese cloth in either, you'll even get more
    solids out.  Either way, the end result will have a little more solid
    matter in it than you probably get now with paper towels.  In many
    cases this is acceptable, but if you want clear broth, you can do a
    little magic on the cloudy stuff after it has been cooled and defatted.
    
    Mix some egg whites into the cool broth, about 1 egg white per quart of
    broth.  Use a whisk to make sure they are mixed well.  Put the broth on
    the burner on low, and gradually bring it up to a simmer.  The egg
    whites will start to cook and eventually will separate and float,
    leaving a crystal clear broth.  Do not boil!  Simmer!  for about 5-10
    minutes or until the egg whites are a gross looking grey mass floating
    on top.  Then filter the whole thing thru cheeseloth in a colander or
    strainer.  Use a ladle, and pour it gently.  The result is amazing! 
    And, by the way, if it gets screwed up, add another egg white, and
    start again a little more carefully.

Good info on soup straining... Thanks!

Now about those strainers.  I have seen flat ones and conical ones.  What
are the strengths and weaknesses of each, especially as related to the
topic of chicken soup straining?

Flat?  Do you mean drum shaped?  I think these are for forcing pureed stuff for
pate or mousse.  I've seen them used on pureed fish, livers, etc., even some
veggies.  But not for straining liquids.  For that you want a strainer that
has a low spot so that the liquid runs to the middle.

The things you should look at is how fine the mesh is, how narrow the whole 
thing is and what the volume (for holding solids) is.  A very narrow sieve 
may be good for mostly-liquid-with-small-chunks, but larger pieces may not fit 
in, and it might be harder to press down to extract all the juices.  But they 
will fit into narrower places, like small bowls.  Also some conical sieves 
(sometimes called china caps or chinois), also can be used with a tapered 
wooden pestle.  These are great for making jellies, when you want to mash the
fruit and extract the pulp and seeds.

    I just finished my first batch of chicken soup.  I kept
    the bones and skin from about 3 weeks of making boneless
    chicken and stored it in the freezer.  My question is this:
    
    Does your homemade chicken soup congeal?  The way the soup
    was made was-
    
    -Dump chicken mass into my large pot full of water
    -Add a couple of onions, some celery and carrots, coarse chopped.
    -Little salt and pepper
    -Let it boil about 3 hours.
    -Scoup out the vegetables and most of the fat
    -Strain through cheesecloth (it came out very clear!)
    -Add more veggies and simmer 20 minutes.
    -Cool and add cooked rice and chicken.
    
    It was great.  But when I would take the bowl out of
    the fridge to heat some up, it was gelatinous.  Heated, 
    it liquified right out.  So, does your soup gell-up 
    like this?
    
    Gary

    Yes, it does congeal.  I believe something in the bones makes it do
    that.  It sounds like you made terrific broth.
    
    Mary Lou

    It's from the gelatin in the bones.  Don't worry about it.  it does
    make the soup easier to defat - you can just lift the solid fat off the
    the gelatin soup before reheating it, and get all of the fat without
    losing any of the tasty soup underneath.
    
    /Charlotte

    My mother used to call this "aspic".  I have no idea if I've spelled
    that right, but that's the way it sounds to me.  She used to save some
    of this and serve it to herself for lunch on a bed of lettuce with a
    little mayonaise, if I am remembering right.  I never liked it, but she
    thought it was wonderful stuff.

    
Bahamian Chicken Soup (Souse)

Several large onions, chopped
1 tsp. ground allspice, or crushed allspice berries
6-12 bay leaves
Plain chicken or turkey stock (your own, or canned)
Chicken or turkey, chopped (cooked or uncooked; if
 left whole, or with bones, remove bones/skin carefully
 after cooking, and defat the soup when cool)
Rice and/or pasta
Vegetables of your choice (suggest corn, green beans,
carrots, chopped tomatoes, frozen mixed vegetables)

Simmer the onions, allspice, and bay leaves in the
stock for 30 minutes or so.  Put the bay leaves,
some of the onion, and some stock in the blender
and liquefy.  (This is for thickening, but mainly
for safety, as bay leaves 
left whole are the perfect size and shape and
texture to catch in the windpipe.  If you don't have a
blender, put the bay leaves in a little cheesecloth bag
or a tea ball so they'll be easy to remove.)  
Add the rice and pasta and chicken/turkey and vegetables.  
Cook until tender.

Amounts and times are very approximate.

This is WONDERFUL -- my favorite chicken soup.  It's
even better the second day.