making soup

Good soup takes time. From the moment you decide you want a little soup, to the moment you sit down to enjoy it, a good twenty-four hours or more really should pass if, truly, the first words from your mouth on tasting your soup are: “That’s good soup.”

Which isn't to say it's impossible to toss together a pot of soup in a hurry and have a reasonably sufficient meal. But it takes a day for that soup to mellow into the rich wisdom one expects from a good bowl of soup. So save a little for later.

If it’s chicken soup you want you should first roast a chicken. Since soup is your ultimate goal you’ll need to ensure some leftovers from this first stage of soup making, so if you’re pretty sure your clan will pick the bones of one chicken clean on the first night it's served for dinner, you may want to roast two.

I like this recipe, from The New Basics, but any will do. The goal is to have leftover roast chicken by the time you’re done.

chicken with garlic, lemon, and rosemary
2 heads garlic
1 large onion
1 roasting chicken ( 4 to 4 1/2 pounds) with its giblets
1 teaspoon dried tarragon
salt and cracked pepper to taste
2 lemons, halved (Meyers are magical, if you can find them)
6 small sprigs fresh rosemary
2 tablespoons unsalted butter you can get by with just the olive oil, if you prefer
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup stock (I use veggie bouillon)

Remove the paper-like outer skin from the garlic heads and separate the cloves. Don’t peel, but do clean.

Cube the onion. (Or sliver it, if you prefer.)

Sprinkle the cleared cavity of the rinsed chicken with tarragon and salt and pepper. Place the lemons and the rosemary in the cavity and tie the legs closed if you like (I don’t).

Brown the chicken in the olive oil in a big dutch oven, turning it gently with wooden spoons trying not to break the skin, about 8 minutes on each side. Remove the chicken, scrape up the cooked bits, toss in the onion and garlic and the giblets (but not the liver. saute the liver real quick and give it to the cat. he'll love you for it. Charlie did.). Stir it all up and set the chicken back on top.

Pour on the stock, lower the lid (or seal it up with aluminum foil).

Cook covered for 30 minutes at about 400F / 200C (the recipe calls for 350F / 180C, but I find it comes out more moist if you start it off super hot and the lower it down for the last little while). Then uncover and cook for another hour or so, basting regularly.

Eat it up when it’s good to go, serving it with the pan juices, onions and the garlic cloves, which you can squeeze out of their skins onto french bread. If you thought about it you probably roasted some potatoes or sweet potatoes in the oven at the same time, and tossed up a green salad.

Yum.

Come time to do the dishes leave the dutch oven as is. Discard the lemon and the rosemary and pick off the left over chicken meat and refrigerate it for now -- but not all of it. Leave some on the bones to simmer -- because now you’re going to make some chicken stock.



The remainder is adopted from Jane Brody’s Turkey Carcass Soup -- rigged, really, to accommodate Thanksgiving leftovers. Works either way.

For the stock:

Break the carcass into pieces
Use any pan juices that look palatable

Roughly chop and add:
2 onions
2 ribs of celery unless you intensely dislike celery (I do)
2 carrots
1 turnip
1 leek
1 clove of garlic
bouquet garni of parsley, 1/2 teaspoon thyme and 1 bay leaf (tied up in a cheesecloth)
Enough water to cover the whole mess

Bring to a boil and simmer for 2 to 3 hours. Refrigerate overnight (in the same old dutch oven, if you like) so that you have an opportunity to skim off the fat that rises to the top.

Heat it up and then strain the stock. (Brody suggests picking off the additional meat and removing the bones, pureeing all that remains to freeze and use in future stews. I can’t testify to how successful this might be, because I’ve never tried it.)

Now you’re ready to make the soup. You’ll need:

1 small onion, minced or chopped how you like it
1 clove garlic, minced
a splash of olive oil
1 cup carrots, diced or chopped how you like them (I like larger pieces)
1/2 cup diced celery
1/2 cup chopped mushrooms (or more, if you live with lovers of mushrooms)
1 1/2 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon marjoram
6 to 7 cups of the stock you just created
the chicken (or turkey) you saved
1/3 cup raw barley or rice or sub in Manischewitz egg noodles and/or Matzo Balls

Saute the onion and garlic until soft.

Add the carrots, celery and mushrooms, cook down for another five minutes or so.

Add the flour and cook about a minute -- so that it transmogrifies from “floury-mess” to “roux-like thing”.

Add the stock, marjoram and salt and pepper to taste. (If you're using rice or barley add it now. If you're using noodles hold off for a little while yet.)

Simmer for another hour before tossing in the leftover chicken and the noodles. Simmer aggressively for another 10 or 15 minutes to ensure the chicken’s warmed through and the noodles are tender.

If using matzoh balls, follow the steps on the back of the Manischewitz box. (It's a breeze and a treat -- especially if you've never had matzoh balls before.) If you're feeling like a maverick toss on a splash of hot sauce, like Tabasco or Frank's Red Hot. (I'm partial to Frank's.)

A sprinkling of parsley is nice, too.

Enjoy.