By Eileen Goldfinger, Food Editor @Blogfinger and Paul Goldfinger, MD, Regular Editor@Blogfinger.net
Most Jewish families have a favorite recipe for what has been called “heaven in a bowl” (Jaimie Oliver, chef.) It is a “classic comfort food” and has been part of Jewish tradition since medieval times.
Jewish chicken soup is often prepared to make the sick feel more comfortable. The Huffington Post says that it “has healing powers,” and the University of Nebraska documented some health benefits (anti-inflammatory effects) for colds; probably due to breathing in those delightful fumes.
Eileen follows the tradition of my Mom’s family who came over from Eastern Europe (Poland) shortly after the turn of the 20th century. They settled in Bayonne, New Jersey where they lived in a small row house on the Boulevard. There were 9 children. Grandpa Chaim was a tailor. He sewed uniforms for the Czar until he got to New Jersey.
Grandma Helen was a little gray haired lady with a tiny kitchen where she turned out phenomenal traditional foods. I previously posted the photo of my Mom’s 4 brothers in uniform, newly returned from WWII.
As a kid I loved to meet my cousins in Bayonne where we would search the attic and basement for souvenirs from the Pacific and eat all those treats which we craved at that little house.
My mom, Myrna, known also by her Jewish name–Malka, was best known for her soups, and the one I loved so much was her chicken soup with matzo balls and/or noodles. She always said that she had two “secret ingredients” which Eileen divulges below (with asterisks.)
Never try this recipe without those two items. Sometimes Mom would exaggerate, like when she would tell her students that my Dad was in the FBI and wore a secret code ring. They loved her because she told stories and because she would dance and sing at the drop of a hat.
Mom’s soup is great anytime, but especially for a cold day or if you have a cold..
So here is Myrna’s recipe for Jewish Chicken Soup. (Shared by Eileen Goldfinger, Food Editor @Blogfinger.net)
1 4 pound whole chicken, quartered, skinned; wrap it in a cheese cloth and tied with cotton string
1 large onion, diced
3 stalks celery, diced
4 carrots, peeled
2 cubes chicken bouillon*(see below for amount)
1 1/2 bunch fresh dill*
1 bunch fresh flat-leafed parsley
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
water
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper to taste
salt to taste
Heat oil in an 8 quart stock pot; add onions and celery; sauté for 10 minutes, until they wilt.
Cut 2 carrots into rounds and 2 carrots lengthwise and then in half. Add carrots to pot. Add chicken to pot and fill with water two inches above the chicken.
Bring to boil and then reduce heat to a simmer. Take ½ of the dill* and parsley, tie them together with cotton twine, and place in pot. Break bouillon cubes* into pieces and add to pot. Then add ½ teaspoon black pepper to pot; stir.
Place cover on pot, leaving it ajar; simmer for 1 hour.
Remove dill and parsley from soup and discard. Remove the lengths of carrot from pot, mash them and put them back into pot.
Taste soup; add more pepper and salt according to taste. Add 4 tablespoons of chopped dill to soup.
Serve with cooked thin noodles or matzo balls. (Matzo balls can be purchased in the kosher, refrigerated section of some grocery stores).
Serves 4 (PG note: Some people throw out the chicken after that, but I have always loved boiled chicken with Heinz ketchup.)
Mom adored Broadway show music, and she sang those songs all the time around the house. The last show she saw on Broadway was her very favorite, Oklahoma.
Eileen and I took her and bought her an official T shirt which said “I’m just a girl who can’t say no.” She was thrilled.
This song, “People Will Say We’re in Love” from Oklahoma is performed by Alfred Drake and Joan Roberts; written by Rodgers and Hammerstein, and would have brought tears to her eyes. (As did peeling and dicing onions for the soup)
Yes, the photo of the soup is inviting!
My Hungarian Grandmother taught me how to make chicken soup…She always put in parsnips.! She also made her own noodles that she would drop into the soup!
The tip of wrapping chicken in cheesecloth
is excellent; it avoids chicken falling apart!
Eileen, the photo above of your soup looks outstanding! I can almost taste it! You should sell some at the Cheese Shop or Burblemeiers in Ocean Grove! Looks so tasty!
Reblogging stimulates nostalgia Eileen and Paul.
One can remember purchasing “soup greens” neatly tied in a bundle for the task. Parsnip was available.
But today “the times they are a changin.” You make your own bundle. Parsnip is an endangered species.
But fortunately, however created, chicken soup cures the ailments –real or imagined.
Reblogged this on Blogfinger and commented:
Mom’s chicken soup never goes out of style. ——Paul @Blogfinger.
When Eileen and I were going to school at GWU–she in education; I in medicine, she would come over to my apartment visit my roommate and me on Saturdays. She always made the one recipe which she knew ( I knew none).
It was also a chicken dish: she put chicken parts on a baking sheet and poured “1890 Salad Dressing” on it and then baked in the oven.
My roommate Jim, who was also from New Jersey, called her “The Chicken Cook.”
Curmudgeon: Your way of using your own homemade stock is the classic way, and it sounds very good.
But if you decide last minute that you want chicken soup for dinner, and you don’t have homemade stock, I begin by sautéing onions, celery and carrots. If I have a carcass and/or some left over chicken from a prior chicken dinner, I will use that and add Wegmans unsalted nonfat chicken broth to the pot.
For me the tradition is always dill and parsley, and I don’t use salt, so therefore the bullion adds salt flavor and color. To make it different from the classic basic chicken soup recipe I will sometimes add a can of cannellini beans and any other vegetable such as spinach, chard, zucchini or any combination.
Thanks for lending your recipe to this chicken soup discussion—–it sometimes boils down to the recipe we were raised with, or how creative we want to be as cooks.
This is a nice recipe, but mine differs in some significant ways:
Soup is a two-step process. First, I make a stock. it is not necessary to use a whole chicken. I use a turkey neck or two, along with the back and wing tips removed from a fresh chicken. Also the carcass of a cooked bird if I have one. I don’t use bullion cubes, as they are really mostly salt. Instead, I use a container of Wegmans organic chicken stock (a pint) and water to cover. I also add vegetable scraps along with the carrot and celery, whatever you have (Jacque Pepin keeps everything, which he learned growing up in France during WWII). The spice blend is up to you. Dill is nice, but so are parsley, thyme, and allspice. Also three whole cloves. I use dry spices for the stock, along with the stalks of fresh herbs you might not eat.
It is essential to make the stock first, and then refrigerate it in order to collect and remove the fat. Also, I make the stock in a pressure cooker, absolutely a must. It extracts the flavor and there is no scum to remove. Cheesecloth does make a nice strainer, but it is not essential for a good stock.
Once you have the stock it may be used in soup or anything else you want.
Editor’s note: Wing tips from a fresh chicken? Who would put shoes in their soup?
E&P: Thanks for a terrific article on Mom’s chicken soup. One item more was needed: Once all was in, take a pinch of salt & throw it over your left shoulder…for good luck. …mel
Norm: Paul’s mom never used cheese cloth; that is my recent adaptation so the bones and skin don’t get into the soup (only the flavor.)
Eileen
It is a LUCKY man whose wife can make his Mother’s chicken soup! It looks delicious.
Paul knowing the mental diversity in our ethnic group, Jewish penicillin was not standardized among mothers. No doubt dill was critical to all. But my mom would use selzer (a common table beverage at the time) to make the lightest, fluffiest –most enviable– matzoth balls.The chicken was never gift-wrapped in the soup. We ate it Friday night. Had it as cutlets on Saturday. And by Sunday, it was chicken salad.