Basic recipe: Chicken, noodles, celery, carrots, herbs and broth.
I got the flavor profile right, but what I want to do is make the broth thicker. Something between a broth and a gravy. (On the off chance any of you have had the CNS at Jason’s Deli, that’s the exact recipe I’m going for.)
Last time I made it, I just mixed a quarter cup of corn starch with cold water, and then threw it into the pot towards the end of cooking. The problem is, it didn’t seem to thicken the broth at all.
What did I do wrong? Not enough corn starch?
Yeah, probably not enough corn starch. The noodle starch will add a bit of thickness, but not enough. I always prefer to cook the noodles separately, then ladle the soup over them when serving. Keeps the noodles from getting soggy for next day serving.
You don’t make chicken soup from broth, you make it from stock. If I was adding cornstarch I’d use less than a quarter cup for sure, probably only a tablespoon or two, and add it early in the process then cook until it thickened. You may have added it too late.
If you want to thicken with corn starch then adding it at the end in the proportion mentioned by Bill Door is fine. You just need to bring the soup back to the boiling point to make sure to activate the corn starch. Also make sure you add enough noodles to enhance the thickness/heartiness. A better way to thicken soup might be to start with a roux (1:1 flour and butter). Depending on the size of your pot, 1 or 2 tbls of each should be enough. You’ll want to melt the butter and add the flour and “cook” it over gentle heat (keep stirring!) for a few minutes before adding the stock, etc. Not strictly speaking the traditional way to make chicken noodle soup. Sound more like making chicken pot pie filling. But hey, nobody is judging. It’s good comfort food no matter how you want to eat it.
We’ve always done chicken soup from broth. (Homemade broth, but broth none-the-less.) There is no rule that chicken soup must be made from one or the other and, depending on where you are, there might even be confusion as to what the difference between the two are. The most basic chicken soup is just chuck a chicken in the water with some vegetables, cook for a few hours, and serve over cooked noodles. That’s the one I grew up with, and that’s still my favorite. Nice and clear, no thickeners, none of that.
The rule for corn starch is about 2 tablespoons per cup of liquid for gravy consistency. I’m assuming you want something less than that. What I would do is make a slurry of about a half cup corn starch with enough cold water to dissolve (I’m imagining you doing a several quart pot of soup), and then slowly add it towards the end of cooking. Bring the liquid up to the boil, and it should start thickening within a minute. Keep stirring. If it’s not thick enough for you after boiling for a minute, just keep adding more until it’s your desired consistency. You don’t want to cook it for too long, as corn starch does break back down after a certain point, but you have several minutes window before you need to worry about that. That’s how I always thicken, and I’ve never had any issues. Just eyeball it, take a guess on the conservative side, then adjust to the thickness you desire.
(I actually prefer flour as a thickener for my soups, but you have to use about twice as much of it. You can go the roux route, as mentioned by QuickSilver or just use the slurry route you’ve been doing. It takes a little bit longer for the sauce to thicken, and you have to cook it slightly longer to get the raw flour flavor out.)
When I make vegetable beef soup, I stir in a packet of beef gravy mix to give it some body and a flavor boost. Maybe it would work for chicken soup, too?
Try making it with homemade dumplings instead of noodles.
Beat an egg into a cup of all-purpose flour, along with a half-tsp of baking powder and S&P to taste. If too stiff, add a little milk. Drop teaspoonfuls into the simmering soup, cover, and let cook for about a half hour.
Bits fall off the edges of the dumplings and thicken the liquid, giving you a soup that borders on stew. And the dumplings taste better than any noodle you can buy in a store, because you made them with your own delicate little paws.
Matzoh balls are good, too – just buy a box of matzoh meal and follow the directions – but they have less thickening effect. On the plus side, you can make them with yummy chicken fat!
Oh, and add a bay leaf to your soup pot. Makes a world of difference.
Try adding the corn starch and water, but also add a packet of dissolved unflavored gelatin. The best chicken stock is made from the collagen rich bits like backs, necks, wings and leg/thigh quarters [well, I actually just roughly whack a whole bird into chunks with a cleaver and put it in the insert of a pasta cooker along with a whole huge onion roughly chopped, a handfull of stalks of celery and a similar amount of carrots, with the herbs wrapped in gauze. When the bird has turned into broth, about 3 or 4 hours at a low simmer, I pull the penta insert out and let it drain. After the meat is cooled, I chunk it back into the pot of broth with a new batch of finely sliced veggies and simmer til they are tender then add cooked wide egg noodles last minute] The gelatin gives a smoother fuller mouth feel without adding taste. Try it gelatin only, cornstarch only and combined to see which version you prefer, I find cooking with the collagen enriched bones makes a better broth actually. Oh, and for beef - try adding a dollop of vegemite - the flavor will be reminiscent of canned beef stew that uses hydrolized protein in the recipe =)
Many good suggestions above. The easiest way is to just add a diced potato. If I want a fancier thick creamy chicken soup I make a cream sauce (roux plus milk or cream) and stir it in after everything else is cooked. I don’t care for the way cornstarch tastes.
I prefer flour, too, but not so much for the taste, but cornstarch just has this weird glossy sheen I don’t like and a more gelatinous consistency that I don’t find as appealing as flour.
I’ve discovered an alternate. I recently bought potato starch for some Asian recipes, and found that I love the way it thickens. You end up with a clear, glossy thickened item, and there’s no cornstarch flavor. You’d think the sauce would be a little grainy, like thin soupy potatoes, but it’s not. It’s perfectly satin-smooth.
I’ve used potato starch to thicken homemade teriyaki sauce and stir-fry sauces, with brilliant results. As soon as the weather gets cold enough, I’m going to do a nice chicken soup slightly thickened with potato starch.
I get better results grating a potato into the soup than cutting it into chunks. The gratings basically dissolve and thicken the soup. Instant potato flakes do the same thing.
I also boil two chickens in the same water to make the broth. One gets cut up and put into the soup, the other goes into the fridge for other dishes. I end up with a nice shmaltzy broth.
For seasoning, I use Vegeta mix, which I highly recommend.
I normally use glucomannan for thickening. It’s made from the root of the konjac plant. It’s very low in digestible carbohydrates and is essentially flavorless. It has more than twice the thickening power as cornstarch volume to volume, but I didn’t recommend it because there’s probably not one household in a hundred who has it.
Cook some carrots in your soup. Put the cooked carrot in your blender or food processor and make carrot purée. Return to soup. Adds texture, flavor, and color.
It’s the same way I thicken curry gravy, forget flour, starch and gravy mixes. Boil your broth or stock with a carrot, a potato, a stalk of celery, and an onion. Boil until all the veg is very soft. Remove to a blender with a little of the liquid and purée. Add back into your soup or curry gravy and it becomes lovely and thick as well as yummy. Without the starchy effect!