OK guys, tomorrow’s the day. I’m getting quite absorbed by all this cooking malarkey, and a close encounter with the label on a tin of soup was a bit of a shocker. So tomorrow I’m going to make me some soup for lunch.
What do you suggest? I’m willing to give anything a go. I went shopping today and grabbed anything even vaguely soupy to my mind. I have:
tomato puree
chicken stock cubes
leeks
carrots
chicken breast
mushrooms
onions
garlic
How do I go about turning some or all of these things into a soup?
I don’t have a blender or a liquidiser, though I’m thinking about picking up a small hand liquidiser if they’re not too pricey.
Also, next time you make soup, it’s good if you’re getting meat to get cuts of meat with reasonably thick bones in them. You cook the meat and the bones in the water, and it not only gives flavor but also gelatin if you cook it long enough. (Gelatin is a great thing for both flavor and mouthfeel of the broth.)
As for what you have now, you could easily make a soup out of most of those things. I’m not so sure about the tomato puree, but everything else plus rice or pasta would make a decent chicken soup. If you’re going to the store to get celery, see if you can get parsnips. Man, are they tasty in chicken soup, and they’re cheap too!
Cut up the chicken into strips or cubes and sauté it in oil for about five minutes. Add the veggies, which you have diced or chopped. Sauté them for 4-5 minutes. You could add some herbs and spices at this point, if you like.
Meanwhile, boil some water per the chicken cube instructions and make enough stock to cover the veggies and then some. (Some people like watery soups; others like them stew-y - make it to your taste). Add the broth to the pot, bring it to a boil, and then simmer it for a while (1/2 hour is about minimum, longer can be nicer).
It won’t be a purist’s chicken soup made with homemade stock, etc. but it should be tasty.
I’d save the tomato paste for another time - people do make tomato - flavoured chicken soups but they’re not my favourite and you’d need tomatoes and possibly some tomato sauce to do it up nicely.
Try udon sometime, too. Nice, thick noodles and you only need to boil them 1-2 minutes in the soup. Just like you get at the fast food soup stands in Japan.
If you do go to get celery, pick up either some chicken broth, or some vegetable broth. It’s easier to do a quick off the cuff soup with broth as a base, unless you are comfy with making stock from the cubes. (I mean a ready to pour liquid base, not one that requires the extra step of dissolving.)
I am not sure about the tomato puree myself too, but the rest of it can make a great soup. You can take the same ingredients another time, and make a soup, and it won’t be quite the same, but still good. Note, below is an off-the-cuff idea, it probably needs adjusting as far as logistics/timing goes. Have lots of broth or stock, since you will be cooking the pasta (or rice) in the broth and still need some to make it a soup.
De-bone the chicken and cube it. I am not sure how I’d cook it, maybe grilling, or boiling in a pot with some seasonings? I don’t think frying it would taste good. Take up the cooked chicken, and set it aside. (Where it won’t spoil, and the cat or dog can’t get it.) Put the pasta or rice in the broth, with what seasonings you’d like. (Pepper, maybe some cumin, parsely, even some ground sage would be good.) Be very careful not to scald your broth as you cook the pasta or rice in it. (I think I’d go pasta, less cooking time.) Fry up the celery, onions and garlic until they are clear, not browned. Thinly slice the carrots and mushrooms, and thoroughly wash and cut up the leeks roughly and set them aside. Once the rice or pasta is done, (it should be al dente) add the carrots, and leeks to the stock/broth. Once the carrots are softened a bit, add in the mushrooms and chicken. Season to taste, let it gently simmer about 20-30 minutes longer, take off the heat and enjoy. (This might be good with a dollop of tomato puree in it, just for flavor come to think of it…)
The main thing with this soup is the timing. You have to make certain that none of your ingredients gets overdone.
What was this close encounter with a label that spurned you to make your own soup?
You’ve got pretty much everything you need to make a good soup right there. I’d omit the tomato puree this time. Do you have any other herbs or spices in the cupboard?
You don’t need a blender unless you’re making a cream soup. Even then sometimes you don’t. What’s a liquidizer? Where are you from?
Take a large pot you can use to simmer the soup for awhile and fill it with, let’s say 8 cups or 4 pints of water. Add as many chicken stock cubs as the directions say. It’s probably one cube per cup of water, or maybe one cube per two cups of water.
Turn up the heat and start bringing this to a boil. Add two or three chicken breasts.
If you have or can get a bay leaf, toss that in.
While the chicken is boiling (for 15-20 minutes), start cleaning and chopping all your veggies.
Chop up some garlic. Maybe two teaspoon’s or so. A lot of this is “to taste.” Add that in now so it can simmer.
When your chicken’s cooked after about twenty minutes, take it out and set on a plate to cool. Away from the cat. Adjust your pot to a low boil or simmer. Bubbling, but not a rolling cauldron.
You’ve got both leek and onion, but you don’t need to use both. Let’s go with the leek. Slice one up. Toss it in.
Slice up one or two carrots, one or two stalks of celery, maybe a handful of mushrooms, and let this all simmer.
If you have dried parsley & thyme, add about 1 teaspoon of each. Add some pepper to taste, and maybe some salt if you think it needs it.
Optionally, you could add maybe a tablespoon of lemon juice, and maybe a little hot pepper. Up to you.
You’ll want the vegetables to simmer for at least 10-15 minutes but maybe up to half an hour or so.
If you want to add rice or pasta, it might be better to cook it seperately and add it to the soup once it’s done. Later when you’ve got a bit more experience, you can add the rice or pasta to the soup as it’s cooking and just time it so it’s all done at the same time.
Anyway, while the veggies & spices are simmering, tear up the chicken with your hands and add it back in. Or cut it up with a knife. I like my chicken soup with hand shredded bits but some people like their soup with nice evenly chopped chunks.
That’s pretty much it for a simple, basic chicken soup.
Slightly cooking the meat & veg first will give you a richer flavour. You can do it the other way round, per levdrakon’s suggestion (though I definitely would not boil the chicken - it’ll get tough) but Emeril likes to give the good stuff a start and finish it in the broth and I agree.
It depends on the chicken whether or not it comes out tough when boiled. You’re right though QG, it’s risky. Ok, then grill the chicken if you try my idea.
Well, I was trying to keep it simple and this recipe works well for me. But you’re right of course, you can definitely do lots of wonderful things to the chicken before adding it to the soup.
Maybe it’s just me then. The last time I tried sauteing chicken for a soup, I didn’t like the oil that wouldn’t drain off. It made a scum on the soup. Would draining then putting it on paper towels be better maybe?
That’s the only problem I see. The cubes will work, but they have mundo salt, and are far inferior to even canned stock, much less self made. Our local grocery stores seem to have canned stock on sale fairly often, but lately we have been getting 1 qt. boxes of chicken stock at CostCo. They have resealable lids, so we don’t let any go to waste.
I see that I am too late to really contribute to this, but you could throw all the ingredients in the OP in a pot a make a great soup. Plus some egg noodles.
Actually the best idea is to refrigerate the soup overnight and skim off the congealed fat in the morning. You don’t need to use tons of oil to cook it in the first place, either.
