The other day I was making my usual chicken broth. I use a basic recipe, celery, onion, parsley, carrots, salt, pepper, poultry seasonings and egg noodles. The only thing I changed was that this time I chopped up the giblets and boiled them with the broth. I like giblets in my stuffing’s so I thought ti might be a good idea. It destroyed my broth to the point where I chucked it in the trash.
My question is this. I did notice it had a unique flavor that some might like, I was wondering if there was something else I could have added to make it more palatable.
Dilute it with more broth is my only guess. My mother always made chicken soup with the giblets and liver in it. It tasted fine (and my brother and I would fight over the liver and the heart), but it was a pretty light broth, like one whole chicken to about 6-8 quarts of water, and only used the giblets included with the chicken, so just two livers.
Seconding the omission of liver. That stuff is potent and funky. I always take it out before making giblet gravy or stuffing. Not only does it ruin the flavor, it makes the texture gritty.
Somehow it’s ok in dirty rice but otherwise, just no.
The liver disintegrates and spreads through the broth. You can dice it, brown it, and add it at the end without overly affecting the soup, but you may as well just leave it out. You can make chopped liver with it but you’d only get enough from one liver to cover about two crackers.
Julia Child taught me when … well, I was a child … you don’t put liver in stuffing, the taste is too strong for most people. It did repel my mother and sister, although my dad would eat anything. Interestingly, Jacques Pepin dose put liver in stuffing and broth. It was a topic Julia argued with him about until the bitter end. Well, the bitter end of that last PBS program they did together, at least. Liver. Its simply an acquired taste.
Looks like HBDC in the OP was making an actually chicken soup.
Me, I always make a chicken broth with just the chicken leavings (wing tips, backbone, fat, skin, heart & gizzard), plus the onion skins and carrot shavings and parsley stems from the rest of the night’s cooking.
Strain, put in the fridge overnight, then skim off the accumulated fat in the morning. Save for frying eggs or potatoes.
Then I use that basic broth for my soup…add good chicken, onion, celery, carrot, S&P, bay leaf, whatever. After an hour or so, add egg noodles or rice or dumplings.
What my question actually was is whether or not there was a broth recipe that included the liver. I didn’t like the taste at all but it left me thinking it might be good with a different set of spices.
There are several concoctions in a powder, paste or cube form that can provide excellent (to my taste) chicken broth, not to mention canned and boxed liquids. The dry powder doesn’t even need refrigeration. While I’m not adverse to boiling leftover chicken bones and parts to make broth, the prepared stuff certainly is more convenient to store and use. And consistent.
My chicken soup is of the Hungarian style, probably similar to Pulykamell’s mother’s. It’s not chicken soup without chicken livers. I put them in about ten minutes towards the end so they’re not too dry and also don’t break apart. You have to cut out the core too, as that’s the bitter part.
Also, I cook the egg noodles separately, and add them to the soup bowl as I’m serving. Noodles cooked with the soup sound like they might end up pretty mushy.
Why? All noodles do is absorb water. The water might be plain (no flavor) or a broth (with flavor). Mushy comes from overcooking, not from what they’re cooked in.
Although I’m with you on “adding [stuff] to the soup bowl as you’re serving.” I add many soup ingredients (onion, celery, carrot, etc.) to the pot at the last minute so they don’t lose their crispness or individual flavor. But noodles don’t have much flavor, just substance.
Yep, noodles were always cooked separately and only combined at serving time. Despite my user name, my parents are both Polish, and the typical chicken broth was made with a whole chicken, carrots, and onion (with the skin on, cut in half, and charred on the stove), and usually either green celery stalk or celery root and/or parsnips. Occasionally, some meaty beef bones would go into it, as well. Plus salt, whole peppercorns, and usually a couple allspice berries. It was not a very heavily concentrated French style broth, but rather a light clear chicken soup. This is generally what it looked like.
If you’re serving immediately the whole pot, you’re fine. Otherwise, if you make a huge pot of of soup, they end up getting soggy and over-hydrated. At least that has always been my experience. I mean, I make a few soups like this where I don’t care if the noodles become water-logged, but not Polish chicken soup. That’s always on the side, so noodles go in the bowl, hot chicken broth is spooned over them. Plus, it keeps the broth nice and clear which is important for this style of soup. If I’m doing a hearty chicken-and-dumpling type soup, it doesn’t really matter. And that’s a soup where you really notice the noodles just soak up the broth over time, even if you just stick it straight into the fridge right after cooking it up.
What Pulykamell said - if you’re going to eat the whole pot in one sitting, yeah, but my soup lasts about three days and reheating those noodles for a few days is going to make them soggy.
