I’m trying to make two kinds of soup. Chicken Noodle and Vegetable. I use broth as a base for both, I think I’ll change that for the Veggie Soup to … something, but more important than that, I need to know what spices to use for them, because the last times I’ve tried to make them they have not smelled good enough to even think of tasting.
I want to make yummy soup! So help me, please?
If you want to make yummy soup, you must use yummy stock. Please don’t buy it from a store, it’s a cinch to make at home. And if you’re using “broth” from a can, then I can’t help you. I don’t know if anyone can. That stuff is a salty icky nightmare and will ruin anything you cook with it.
Making stock is a breeze, it just takes time. Get the biggest stock pot you can find and fill it half full of water. Add one or two heads of celery, about 10 carrots, two onions, and a bunch of parsley. Now, if it’s a meat stock you want, add the carcass of a roasted chicken with plenty of meat still on it, or a roasted beef haunch, or your roasted turkey carcass, or whatever (roasted meat will add a little color to your stock, as will the parsley, but be ready for a pretty clear stock). If it’s a veg stock, you are all set. Add water until full. Now bring it to a boil, turn down the heat and simmer for 6-12 hours, stirring occasionally. That’s it.
When you remove the stock from the burner, strain it through a thin towel or cheesecloth into another pot, cover and refrigerate overnight. Throw away the soggy veggies and shredded meat (or munch on it!). In the morning, spoon off the fat that has risen to the top and cooled. Grab a measuring cup and put two cups of stock into each freezer zippie bag and freeze. Now, whenever you want to make soup, you have stock ready to go.
To make soup- take a couple of baggies of stock out of the freezer and warm in a saucepan. Add fresh diced veggies, diced poached chicken, some cooked pasta shapes (I like orzo for my soup) and pepper to taste, and that’s pretty much all you need. A little sage might perk up the flavor, but it really won’t need much.
To speed the process, while I’m making stock, I also poach a bunch of chicken breasts and dice them up. Then I freeze baggies of diced chicken for when I need them.
To easily poach chicken- bring a pot of water to a boil. Add the chicken breasts and bring back to a boil. Boil uncovered for 4 minutes, then turn off the heat, cover and let stand for 20 minutes. Makes perfectly cooked chicken every time.
Good luck!
My favorite here lately is Pho Soup, which is Vietnamese beef noodle soup, and you can use the stock from a can.
Get a can or two of stock (chicken)
Some good thin steak, put onion & garlic powder & pepper to season, set to the side.
Oriental rice noodles (soak in hot water on the side till soft)
Heat the stock and add about a small handfull of chopped cilantro, then add vegetables, I usually use peapods & broccoli
Cut steak into strips and toss in,
Add noodles and heat it all together.
Simple and very tasty.
Really good for "hangover’ soup too!
EjsGirl, is there anything I can use if I’m just a single girl, and I don’t really ever have a carcass lying around? Or do I have to invest in some major chicken action?
Bouillon.
And, weirdly enough, V-8.
Thyme is good in soups like chicken noodle and vegetable. Also, be sure you’re using enough salt - a soup can seem “dead” if it’s underseasoned. Of course, you don’t want to over-salt it either.
I don’t know where you live Lynne_kilii, but in England you can buy very good quality fresh stock in the chilled section of the supermarket, it is exactley the same as if you make it yourself (which I have done on many, many occasion) but saves all the hassle. Here is a recipe for thai noodle soup courtesey of the great Rick Stein, I absolutley love this and you can also experiment with the amounts of spice etc depending on your taste. The fish sauce (naam pla) smells disgusting in its uncooked state but really is vital for authentic flavour.
Ingredients
2 tsp sunflower oil
1 small garlic clove, chopped
a pea-sized piece Thai shrimp paste (blachan)
2 lemongrass stalks
2 kaffir lime leaves - or strip of pared lime rind
1.2 litres/2 pint fresh chicken stock
75g/3oz dried medium egg noodles
2 tbsp Thai fish sauce
1 lime, juice only (about 2 tsp)
½ medium-hot red chilli, seeded and finely chopped
2.5ml/½ tsp light muscovado sugar
50g/2oz fresh spinach or pak choi, cut into 2.5cm/1in wide strips
a handful fresh coriander leaves
Method
Well, sometimes when I don’t have a “carcass” lying around, I make one out of cheap poultry–chicken wings or turkey wings. I salt & pepper them, maybe a tiny bit of other seasoning and broil them in the toaster oven. Then I make the stock as noted above, tossing in the broiled wings for the meat portion. The broiling is important for both flavor and color.
Also, a quick trick I learned over the years–a mashed up potato or two make a wonderful thickener if you like your soups closer to stew.
Hang in there–it takes a while to get confident in yourself as a soup maker.
A revolutionary addition to my kitchen was a hand blender: it opens up the world of creamy soup !
In stock, boil one or two veggies of your choice (eg cauliflower, broccoli, potato+leek, squash+leek, etc). Once soft, remove from liquid and blend (reserve the liquid to add as necessary). Add cream/cheese/roasted garlic. Delicious.
Really Simple Chicken Noodle
Take a whole small chicken and a cut onion or two, several carrots, celery, garlic (if you like it), three bay leaves salt and pepper (you could also include some other fresh or dried herbs that you like i.e.Parsley, Thyme, Rosemary -go easy on them though.)- Simmer all of this together in a large pot with enough water to cover for about 1 and a half to 2 hours. Remove Chicken, cool and remove skin, shred meat from bone and add back to soup (if there is too much chicken, save the extra for chiicken salad or a casserole or whatever). Add a small package of noodles…I like egg noodles. Simmer until noodles are tender- Serve.
A simple throw together vegetable soup
(you can substitute fresh or frozen veggies for the canned)
A large can/bottle of V8 or tomato juice
1 can green beans
1 can corn
1 can peas
1 medium potatoes peeled and cubed
Onion, celery, garlic, carrots and bay leaves
Salt and pepper to taste and herbs of your choice.
throw everything into a large pot and simmer for an hour or two.
You can add whatever you like or leave out any of the ingredients.
These are “Bachelor soups” but they are really good, ten times better than canned.
I usually roast a chicken, then strip most of the meat off of the carcass and use that in the soup. Then I have a carcass for making stock!
Whole chickens are very inexpensive, and you can buy a small one.
A hint- if you have oversalted a dish, cut a raw potato in half and dip it in- it will suck up all the salt and you can start again.
Pureed cooked rice makes a nice thickener as well.
Chicken soup needs tarragon. Vegetable soup needs thyme.
Don’t worry, it is very hard to mess up a pot of soup. Canned stock isn’t worth it, since making your own is easy and economical. Just dump chicken bones into water, bring to the simmer, and leave for an hour - skim off the scummy stuff that rises to the top. Freezes well, lasts forever, indispensable for cooking dishes of all sorts.
I intend to bone and butterfly the turkey I am making Sunday, and make stock out of the bones both for the gravy, and for turkey soup next week. Turkey soup is ridiculously simple - bring the stock to the simmer, and throw in cubed left-over turkey, chopped left-over vegetables, crumbled left-over stuffing, and simmer for a few minutes.
Add sage if you want - I usually put enough in the stuffing that it doesn’t need it.
Regards,
Shodan
I make a huge batch of chicken soup about twice a year; it’s pretty simple.
I buy maybe 10-12 pounds of whole chicken; bags of wild rice, lentils, carrots, frozen corn; an big onion or a bunch of leeks; sometimes zucchini (or whatever else catches my eye in the produce section - this last time I put in some squash because it was that time of year and one of those big bags of frozen brocoli/cauliflower/whatever medley thingies).
Put the chicken in a pot with enough water to cover and add salt and big bunches of fresh parsely and thyme. Toss in a little sage and rosemary and boil it til the meat is falling off the bone. Dice the veggies that need it. Remove the chicken and let both the stock and the chicken cool, then shred the meat and skim off the fat from the stock. Throw everything into a pot and cook it until the beans and rice are done and the herbs are adjusted to your liking. That’s about it.
You can also make stock out of raw meat. It won’t have the color mentioned above but it is passable if you want/need to skip a step.
I also sometimes use marjorum, basil and/or parsley in my chicken soup. Tends to add a very “fresh” taste to the broth.
I know this sounds kinda gross, but I save the skeletons from the chickens we roast and freeze them. Same goes for the turkey and the occasional ham.
When I get a few stored up, I do the stock pot thing too.
Put them in a stock pot with onions, garlic, carrots, parsley, thyme, salt, pepper, celery, and simmer for hours.
Then just season to your taste, strain all the bones and stuff out, and cool.
I actually refridgerate mine overnight.
When you take it back out, all the fat is on top. Remove this with a spoon and put the broth that remains in freezer bags.
Whenever you need some, just pull it out and Wha La! instant soup stock.
Oh, I save the ham bone for split pea soup. nummm…
Two words:
Miso rocks.
OK, more than two words- I’ve made many pots of soup using miso- about a teaspoon per cup of water, more or less to taste. I was doing macrobiotics for a while, and the miso soups I made were just wonderful. My mom even liked them.
Also, I used to save the bones from any on-the-bone meat I ate, and if I wanted to make soup stock, I would just toss a few bones into a pot and boil the hell out of it. It was great, because I didn’t have to make a huge pot of stock, just enough for a single-girl sized pot of soup at a time, and it came out just fine.
Thanks. I’ll try that when I get home…
Parsley, real chicken stock, some good recipies, thickeners… thanks all, keep it coming!
I’d stick with EJ’s advice. It’s not at all that difficult to make stock, and it freezes like a breeze. But it does take time, and I tend to do it on a Sunday, when I’m planning to spend the entire day at home. A few tips to add:
For your meat, if your butcher sells chicken backs or necks, use them. They’re cheap as hell, a bit meaty, and will flavor your stock perfectly. Otherwise, you can use any part of the chicken that has meat and bones. A good rule of thumb is about 2-3 pounds to each gallon of water. Heck, you can use almost any type of meat.
The secret of making a good stock is to cook it slowly. Bring your collection of bones, meat, water and vegetables to a boil and then turn your heat down to low. The stock should be simmering, not boiling. A flame tamer is helpful to distribute and diminish the heat. I cook stock for up to eight hours. You can cheat and get it done in three or four, but it won’t be anywhere near as flavorful.
A traditional addition to flavor stocks is the bouquet garni. Take three sprigs of parsley, one sprig of thyme and one or two bay leaves. You can tie it in string or (as I do) tie it with the parsley. It is removed later on.
Parsnip is also very good in broths. With the onion, you don’t even have to peel it. In fact, if you leave the skin on, it gives the broth a nice golden color. Another traditional thing to do with the onion in broth-making is to cut it in half and stick it with two or three cloves.
I personally go much easier on the carrots than EJ, because they make the stock a little two sweet for my tastes. Then again, the carrots 'round these here parts are huge.
Throw in some peppercorns, too.
Always, always, always add the salt at the end of your stock-making session. If you correct for salt too early, your finished stock will be too salty, as the water will have evaporated and concentrated the salt.
If for some reason your stock isn’t quite strong enough, you can cheat a little bit. Add a little bit of a bouillion cube and it’ll perk up the flavor.
Leek is also a good vegetable to use when making stock.
Do you have a specialty grocer near you? In a pinch, I have “kicked up” my homemade stock with a commercially available demi glace.
Our carrots out here aren’t exactly the most flavorful; I mostly use them for the vitamins and the color.
The more bones you use in your stock, the more gelatinous it will be (not necessarily bad, just different). I prefer more meat than bones, but that’s just me.