this post exists because hermette wanted it and IT IS HER BIRTHDAY :D
Okay, let's set the scene: it's a grey, rainy spring day in Cleveland, Ohio, and I am fourteen years old. My mother and I are arguing about how many usable Haggadahs we have (many of them are old and ripped to shit); my father is in the next room on his cell phone, and Burro and Burrito are upstairs doing god knows what. We're about six hours away from the descent of my extended family, who are coming over for Passover Seder.
My father hangs up the phone, walks into the dining room with an ashen face, and the following conversation (well, more or less; while the whole thing was extremely memorable, IT WAS A LONG TIME AGO) ensues.
My Father: Oh, god, that was my mother.
My Mother: What'd she want? Oh, tell me she's not coming, that would be great--
My Father: She ruined the soup.
My Mother: WHAT?
My Father: She said she fermented it--how can you ferment matzo ball soup, what does that even mean--
My Mother: Oh my god, oh my god, what do we do? Can we go to the deli and pick up enough soup for--oh, no, for like 40 people, the day of seder, oh, we're so fucked--
My Father: We could always ask my sister to make it.
Everyone: *Makes the face of horror generally associated with my aunt's cooking*
My Father: Okay, nevermind. You're just going to have to make it.
My Mother: I can't make it, I'm making like six other dishes, when do you think I'm going to have time to--I'm not even very good at it, it's your mother's thing, she had one thing to do--
My Father: She's old!
My Mother: Well obviously she's--
Me: Guys. Calm down. I will make the soup.
My Parents, Together: Sorry, WHAT?
There was some doubt expressed. There were some general rumblings of "But you're 14 and watching people make chicken soup is not the same as having made it yourself and OH GOD I CALLED THE DELI AND THEY ARE OUT OF SOUP I GUESS THIS IS OUR ONLY OPTION." There was a screaming fight between me and my father in the produce section of Giant Eagle--remind me to tell you guys the other Giant Eagle Passover story sometime--because he was convinced you made chicken soup with a red onion, which, no. The point is, six hours later my family sat down and ate my first-ever batch of matzo ball soup, and no one else has made it since.
It's snowing in Cleveland today, because the city went "OH SHIT IT'S ALMOST THE END OF MARCH, WHAT IF THESE PEOPLE FORGET WHERE THEY LIVE, BETTER PELT THEM WITH UNFORTUNATE WEATHER." And, because I feel like making chicken soup but can't be fucked to go to the store, I am posting the recipe (in, er, my typical rambling fashion) for you guys. I told you that story to make you understand when I tell you this: this soup breaks some typical cooking rules. There are some things that I'm going to tell you to do that are going to make you go, BUT I SHOULD DO IT THIS WAY or BUT THAT IS CHEATING. It is fine for you to feel that way; it is fine for you to make this soup however you see fit! But, for the love of god, don't try to tell me to do it differently. This recipe is my baby, my precious, my one and only, and the only thing I am inclined towards being particularly egotistical about, because I have in on the authority of everyone I know (family, friends, college roommates, the groups of people with whom I was only vaguely acquainted who used to flock to my college best friend's house in droves when they found out I was making it) that it is the best chicken soup ever. I have made it at least 10 times a year since I was 14, and my mother made her version before me, and my grandmother made her version before her, and IF YOU KNOCK IT, I WILL CUT YOU.
I am mostly kidding, but seriously, you guys: MY FEELINGS ABOUT THIS RECIPE AND THE SOUP IT PRODUCES ARE NOT RATIONAL. Like, I just...I cannot even explain the degree to which I Am A Jewish Woman And This Is My Chicken Soup Recipe And Damn Right It's Better Than Yours is a thing in my family, but it is, and this is. So read and enjoy and go into it knowing that I will accept concrit on anything at all except this, okay? Okay.
Fucking Delicious Chicken Soup
So, chicken noodle soup? It starts with chicken. You could buy a whole roasting chicken and butcher it yourself, but why? It is not all it is cracked up to be, butchering a chicken yourself, lemme tell you. So here is what you do--either go find the packages of chicken in your grocery's poultry section labeled "Whole Cut-Up Fryer" and buy two (yes, two, shut up, trust me, flavor, brilliance, I've made this soup literally 100 times, BUY TWO), or take a step to the side and look over the other selections. You should be able to find a package that contains four bone in, skin on (BONE IN, SKIN ON) chicken breasts, and another that contains 6 or 8 bone in, skin on (BONE IN, SKIN ON) chicken thighs. I tend to buy one such package of breasts and one such package of thighs, because it's usually cheaper than buying two cut-up fryers, and also it gives you more usable meat for later. IF IT IS NOT BONE IN, SKIN ON, DO NOT FUCKING BUY IT. You need the marrow in the bones. You need the fat in the skin. BONE. IN. SKIN. ON.
Or, if you have a local kosher butcher, go to him and say, hey, dude, I need a butchered soup chicken, and he'll hook you right up. Kosher soup chickens are bred to be gigantic and excellent, and in that case you'll only need the one, probably. Maybe get him to throw in an extra (BONE IN, SKIN ON) breast, too.
Take your chicken. Wash it. WASH IT. WASHHHHHH ITTTTTTTTT. Then drop it all into a stockpot (and it'll need to be a large one, this makes enough soup for an army/my whole family) and add cold water. Should be enough to fully cover the chicken by about an inch. Put it on the flame, turn the heat up to high, and let it come to a boil.
WHILE IT IS COMING TO A BOIL, YOU SHOULD BE CHOPPING SHIT. The big vidalia onion--like the biggest one you can find, the one that looks at all the other onions and says PUMP IT UP--you can just peel and halve, you're going to be pulling it out later. The carrots (peeled, 'bout 7 of them, more if you like carrots, less if you don't) and the celery (5 stalks, nasty white ends removed, more if you like celery, less if you don't) you have to chop. I don't care what size they are, so long as they're all about the same size. Big, small, medium, minced, don't give a fuck, they should just be the same size as each other. Personally I like to halve the carrots and then chop them into crescents, and halve the celery down the center of each rib and chop accordingly, but that's just me. CHOP AS YOU WILL, ALL THE SAME SIZE.
Dump that shit in a bowl with the onion and one package of mushrooms--and, okay, one. One package of mushrooms. The normal sized package. The pint sized package. Button mushrooms, baby bellas, that mix of a million kinds that are all delicious; any of them are fine, but do not go long on mushrooms. Maybe you love mushrooms! I, personally, fucking love mushrooms. But if you use too many mushrooms, your soup will still be delicious, but it will be brown. Not a beautiful golden color, not a pleasing yellow, but brown. Brown. EXTREMELY FUCKING BROWN. Trust me on this.
Chop some flat-leaf Italian parsley--NOT THE CURLY SHIT, the curly shit should never be used except on the seder plate for dipping in salt water, the end--and throw it in the bowl. Also at this time you can feel free to take a parsnip, a turnip, or a parsnip AND a turnip and throw them in that bowl as well. I don't...really know what they do, I can't taste a difference with or without them, but my grandmother swears by them. She just...can't remember which she swears by...so when she's around I use one or both to humor her :D
Okay, so now you've got a bowl of raw veggies and a boiling pot of chicken and water. YUM. Take yourself a big 'ol spoon and go over to the boiling pot. There should be a film of nasty whitish grey gunk on the top! That's normal but disgusting, and you don't want it in your soup. Take your spoon and skim the fat.
NOW, DUMP IN ALL THE VEGGIES, TURN THE HEAT DOWN TO MEDIUM-LOW, ADD...ENOUGH SALT AND PEPPER (sorry, I do it by feel, but a handful of Kosher salt and...some...pepper) AND LEAVE THAT SHIT ALONE FOR 2-3 HOURS, stirring occasionally. You can leave it longer; the longer it cooks, the more flavor it has, but if you go longer than like 3.5/4 hours your veggies will just fall to pieces and that will be bad.
Okay. So. Take some tongs and pull out the chicken and stick it in the freezer. YES, THE FREEZER, YOUR FINGERS WILL THANK ME LATER. Remove the two onion halves and the parsnip/turnip if you added that and toss them. Leave everything else! (A note: if you are interested in making Matzo Ball Soup For The High Holy Days, which is the only time I make the traditional just-broth-and-matzo-balls-nothing-else version of this stuff, you'd pull everything out at this point. Also, you would have skipped the chopping stage earlier and just thrown all the veggies in whole, except for the onion, which just does better if you halve it.)
NOW, OKAY, I AM GOING TO TELL YOU TO DO A THING THAT IS CHEATING. You are going to...add bullion. YES, I KNOW, BUT HEAR ME OUT: one or two cubes, three if you cooked it for an hour like a lazy ass/someone who forgot to make the soup until too soon before the guests arrived. It's not doing anything but rounding out the flavor a little, and I don't give a fuck that it's cheating--it's my grandmother's cheat, and she's 85, 5 feet tall, and as Jewish as the day is long, y'all. If she does this, you can too. The soup tastes better for it, and I am only in this for the flavor, and IF YOU GIVE ME SHIT ABOUT THIS I WILL RESPOND BADLY.
A note on the bullion, though: this is not the place for bad bullion. Those hard-as-rocks mini cubes you've got in your spice cupboard? Yeah, no, don't even think about it. You want Knorr Chicken bullion or something comparable. It looks like this:
DO NOT USE SHITTY BULLION. THIS STEP IS CHEATING, SO YOU BETTER FUCKING CHEAT WELL.
Okay, now, salt and pepper to taste. Keep in mind that, if you add matzo balls, you're going to need to do this again, because the matzo balls will retain some water and alter the flavor slightly. Turn the heat up to medium high and dump in whatever noodles you feel like--egg noodles if you wanna be traditional, whatever shit you have in your cupboard if you forgot to buy egg noodles again. I've used literally every kind of pasta there is to make this; it's all fine, but egg noodles are best. Let the soup boil with the pasta in it for like 7 minutes and then turn it back down to the simmer; the noodles will be cooked enough.
IN THE MEANTIME: you remember that chicken you put in the freezer? Remove it, and pull it into strips with your fingers. You heard me: pull it into strips with your fingers. 99.99999% of everyone ever agrees that pulled chicken has a better texture and is more enjoyable to eat than chicken you cubed, and the remaining 0.00001% of the population is wrong. And an asshole. You're going to burn your fingers a little doing this, but less than you would have if you hadn't put the chicken in the freezer. USE SOME OF THE WHITE MEAT AND SOME OF THE DARK MEAT, BUT GO LONGER ON THE WHITE MEAT. IT IS BETTER THAT WAY.
SIDESTEP: IF YOU FEEL LIKE MAKING MATZO BALLS...
Cheat again. Use a mix.
No, seriously--if you've made matzo balls before, and you've got a recipe that works for you, use that. But if this is your first time going down the matzo ball road? For fuck's sake, use a mix. I could give you my family's from-scratch recipe, but a) it's complicated and b) it's complicated and c) if my grandmother found out she'd murder me, I am not kidding at all, you guys can't have it, it would be the end of my life.
But, look, matzo balls, they're not hard once you know what you're doing, and the mix makes it easier for you to figure out what you're doing. You'll find the mixes in the Kosher section of your grocery--don't buy the soup-and-matzo ball mix, just the matzo ball mix. DO NOT SKIP THE STEP WHERE THEY TELL YOU TO PUT THAT SHIT IN THE FRIDGE. DO NOT IMAGINE IT IS PASTA AND PUT OIL AND SALT IN THE WATER. DO NOT USE ANY OLD RECIPE YOU FIND ON THE INTERNET, YOU WILL LIKELY AS NOT PRODUCE THINGS WITH THE TEXTURE AND FLAVOR OF GOLF BALLS. USE THE MIX, DO WHAT IT TELLS YOU TO DO, AND YOU SHOULD GET MATZO BALLS THAT ARE FLUFFY AND DELICIOUS.
If they're not fluffy and delicious, you did it wrong. Don't feel bad about it, everyone fucks up a batch or two of matzo balls in their life! Just don't assume all matzo balls taste like that, because they are, in fact, fluffy. And delicious. Forever.
END SIDESTEP.
Now, dump what seems like...an acceptable amount of the chicken...goddamn it I am so bad at recipes, there should be a pretty solid chicken-to-noodle ratio going on is what I'm saying here...into the pot. (Your extra chicken? Mix it with mayo, salt, pepper, and whole grain mustard to make up for the fact that it's soup chicken and most of its flavor's in the soup, and voila! Chicken salad. THIS IS REALLY MANY MEALS.)
If you're adding matzo balls, add them now, and check your seasoning one last time. THEN EAT THAT SHIT. THE END.
My father hangs up the phone, walks into the dining room with an ashen face, and the following conversation (well, more or less; while the whole thing was extremely memorable, IT WAS A LONG TIME AGO) ensues.
My Father: Oh, god, that was my mother.
My Mother: What'd she want? Oh, tell me she's not coming, that would be great--
My Father: She ruined the soup.
My Mother: WHAT?
My Father: She said she fermented it--how can you ferment matzo ball soup, what does that even mean--
My Mother: Oh my god, oh my god, what do we do? Can we go to the deli and pick up enough soup for--oh, no, for like 40 people, the day of seder, oh, we're so fucked--
My Father: We could always ask my sister to make it.
Everyone: *Makes the face of horror generally associated with my aunt's cooking*
My Father: Okay, nevermind. You're just going to have to make it.
My Mother: I can't make it, I'm making like six other dishes, when do you think I'm going to have time to--I'm not even very good at it, it's your mother's thing, she had one thing to do--
My Father: She's old!
My Mother: Well obviously she's--
Me: Guys. Calm down. I will make the soup.
My Parents, Together: Sorry, WHAT?
There was some doubt expressed. There were some general rumblings of "But you're 14 and watching people make chicken soup is not the same as having made it yourself and OH GOD I CALLED THE DELI AND THEY ARE OUT OF SOUP I GUESS THIS IS OUR ONLY OPTION." There was a screaming fight between me and my father in the produce section of Giant Eagle--remind me to tell you guys the other Giant Eagle Passover story sometime--because he was convinced you made chicken soup with a red onion, which, no. The point is, six hours later my family sat down and ate my first-ever batch of matzo ball soup, and no one else has made it since.
It's snowing in Cleveland today, because the city went "OH SHIT IT'S ALMOST THE END OF MARCH, WHAT IF THESE PEOPLE FORGET WHERE THEY LIVE, BETTER PELT THEM WITH UNFORTUNATE WEATHER." And, because I feel like making chicken soup but can't be fucked to go to the store, I am posting the recipe (in, er, my typical rambling fashion) for you guys. I told you that story to make you understand when I tell you this: this soup breaks some typical cooking rules. There are some things that I'm going to tell you to do that are going to make you go, BUT I SHOULD DO IT THIS WAY or BUT THAT IS CHEATING. It is fine for you to feel that way; it is fine for you to make this soup however you see fit! But, for the love of god, don't try to tell me to do it differently. This recipe is my baby, my precious, my one and only, and the only thing I am inclined towards being particularly egotistical about, because I have in on the authority of everyone I know (family, friends, college roommates, the groups of people with whom I was only vaguely acquainted who used to flock to my college best friend's house in droves when they found out I was making it) that it is the best chicken soup ever. I have made it at least 10 times a year since I was 14, and my mother made her version before me, and my grandmother made her version before her, and IF YOU KNOCK IT, I WILL CUT YOU.
I am mostly kidding, but seriously, you guys: MY FEELINGS ABOUT THIS RECIPE AND THE SOUP IT PRODUCES ARE NOT RATIONAL. Like, I just...I cannot even explain the degree to which I Am A Jewish Woman And This Is My Chicken Soup Recipe And Damn Right It's Better Than Yours is a thing in my family, but it is, and this is. So read and enjoy and go into it knowing that I will accept concrit on anything at all except this, okay? Okay.
Fucking Delicious Chicken Soup
So, chicken noodle soup? It starts with chicken. You could buy a whole roasting chicken and butcher it yourself, but why? It is not all it is cracked up to be, butchering a chicken yourself, lemme tell you. So here is what you do--either go find the packages of chicken in your grocery's poultry section labeled "Whole Cut-Up Fryer" and buy two (yes, two, shut up, trust me, flavor, brilliance, I've made this soup literally 100 times, BUY TWO), or take a step to the side and look over the other selections. You should be able to find a package that contains four bone in, skin on (BONE IN, SKIN ON) chicken breasts, and another that contains 6 or 8 bone in, skin on (BONE IN, SKIN ON) chicken thighs. I tend to buy one such package of breasts and one such package of thighs, because it's usually cheaper than buying two cut-up fryers, and also it gives you more usable meat for later. IF IT IS NOT BONE IN, SKIN ON, DO NOT FUCKING BUY IT. You need the marrow in the bones. You need the fat in the skin. BONE. IN. SKIN. ON.
Or, if you have a local kosher butcher, go to him and say, hey, dude, I need a butchered soup chicken, and he'll hook you right up. Kosher soup chickens are bred to be gigantic and excellent, and in that case you'll only need the one, probably. Maybe get him to throw in an extra (BONE IN, SKIN ON) breast, too.
Take your chicken. Wash it. WASH IT. WASHHHHHH ITTTTTTTTT. Then drop it all into a stockpot (and it'll need to be a large one, this makes enough soup for an army/my whole family) and add cold water. Should be enough to fully cover the chicken by about an inch. Put it on the flame, turn the heat up to high, and let it come to a boil.
WHILE IT IS COMING TO A BOIL, YOU SHOULD BE CHOPPING SHIT. The big vidalia onion--like the biggest one you can find, the one that looks at all the other onions and says PUMP IT UP--you can just peel and halve, you're going to be pulling it out later. The carrots (peeled, 'bout 7 of them, more if you like carrots, less if you don't) and the celery (5 stalks, nasty white ends removed, more if you like celery, less if you don't) you have to chop. I don't care what size they are, so long as they're all about the same size. Big, small, medium, minced, don't give a fuck, they should just be the same size as each other. Personally I like to halve the carrots and then chop them into crescents, and halve the celery down the center of each rib and chop accordingly, but that's just me. CHOP AS YOU WILL, ALL THE SAME SIZE.
Dump that shit in a bowl with the onion and one package of mushrooms--and, okay, one. One package of mushrooms. The normal sized package. The pint sized package. Button mushrooms, baby bellas, that mix of a million kinds that are all delicious; any of them are fine, but do not go long on mushrooms. Maybe you love mushrooms! I, personally, fucking love mushrooms. But if you use too many mushrooms, your soup will still be delicious, but it will be brown. Not a beautiful golden color, not a pleasing yellow, but brown. Brown. EXTREMELY FUCKING BROWN. Trust me on this.
Chop some flat-leaf Italian parsley--NOT THE CURLY SHIT, the curly shit should never be used except on the seder plate for dipping in salt water, the end--and throw it in the bowl. Also at this time you can feel free to take a parsnip, a turnip, or a parsnip AND a turnip and throw them in that bowl as well. I don't...really know what they do, I can't taste a difference with or without them, but my grandmother swears by them. She just...can't remember which she swears by...so when she's around I use one or both to humor her :D
Okay, so now you've got a bowl of raw veggies and a boiling pot of chicken and water. YUM. Take yourself a big 'ol spoon and go over to the boiling pot. There should be a film of nasty whitish grey gunk on the top! That's normal but disgusting, and you don't want it in your soup. Take your spoon and skim the fat.
NOW, DUMP IN ALL THE VEGGIES, TURN THE HEAT DOWN TO MEDIUM-LOW, ADD...ENOUGH SALT AND PEPPER (sorry, I do it by feel, but a handful of Kosher salt and...some...pepper) AND LEAVE THAT SHIT ALONE FOR 2-3 HOURS, stirring occasionally. You can leave it longer; the longer it cooks, the more flavor it has, but if you go longer than like 3.5/4 hours your veggies will just fall to pieces and that will be bad.
Okay. So. Take some tongs and pull out the chicken and stick it in the freezer. YES, THE FREEZER, YOUR FINGERS WILL THANK ME LATER. Remove the two onion halves and the parsnip/turnip if you added that and toss them. Leave everything else! (A note: if you are interested in making Matzo Ball Soup For The High Holy Days, which is the only time I make the traditional just-broth-and-matzo-balls-nothing-else version of this stuff, you'd pull everything out at this point. Also, you would have skipped the chopping stage earlier and just thrown all the veggies in whole, except for the onion, which just does better if you halve it.)
NOW, OKAY, I AM GOING TO TELL YOU TO DO A THING THAT IS CHEATING. You are going to...add bullion. YES, I KNOW, BUT HEAR ME OUT: one or two cubes, three if you cooked it for an hour like a lazy ass/someone who forgot to make the soup until too soon before the guests arrived. It's not doing anything but rounding out the flavor a little, and I don't give a fuck that it's cheating--it's my grandmother's cheat, and she's 85, 5 feet tall, and as Jewish as the day is long, y'all. If she does this, you can too. The soup tastes better for it, and I am only in this for the flavor, and IF YOU GIVE ME SHIT ABOUT THIS I WILL RESPOND BADLY.
A note on the bullion, though: this is not the place for bad bullion. Those hard-as-rocks mini cubes you've got in your spice cupboard? Yeah, no, don't even think about it. You want Knorr Chicken bullion or something comparable. It looks like this:
DO NOT USE SHITTY BULLION. THIS STEP IS CHEATING, SO YOU BETTER FUCKING CHEAT WELL.
Okay, now, salt and pepper to taste. Keep in mind that, if you add matzo balls, you're going to need to do this again, because the matzo balls will retain some water and alter the flavor slightly. Turn the heat up to medium high and dump in whatever noodles you feel like--egg noodles if you wanna be traditional, whatever shit you have in your cupboard if you forgot to buy egg noodles again. I've used literally every kind of pasta there is to make this; it's all fine, but egg noodles are best. Let the soup boil with the pasta in it for like 7 minutes and then turn it back down to the simmer; the noodles will be cooked enough.
IN THE MEANTIME: you remember that chicken you put in the freezer? Remove it, and pull it into strips with your fingers. You heard me: pull it into strips with your fingers. 99.99999% of everyone ever agrees that pulled chicken has a better texture and is more enjoyable to eat than chicken you cubed, and the remaining 0.00001% of the population is wrong. And an asshole. You're going to burn your fingers a little doing this, but less than you would have if you hadn't put the chicken in the freezer. USE SOME OF THE WHITE MEAT AND SOME OF THE DARK MEAT, BUT GO LONGER ON THE WHITE MEAT. IT IS BETTER THAT WAY.
SIDESTEP: IF YOU FEEL LIKE MAKING MATZO BALLS...
Cheat again. Use a mix.
No, seriously--if you've made matzo balls before, and you've got a recipe that works for you, use that. But if this is your first time going down the matzo ball road? For fuck's sake, use a mix. I could give you my family's from-scratch recipe, but a) it's complicated and b) it's complicated and c) if my grandmother found out she'd murder me, I am not kidding at all, you guys can't have it, it would be the end of my life.
But, look, matzo balls, they're not hard once you know what you're doing, and the mix makes it easier for you to figure out what you're doing. You'll find the mixes in the Kosher section of your grocery--don't buy the soup-and-matzo ball mix, just the matzo ball mix. DO NOT SKIP THE STEP WHERE THEY TELL YOU TO PUT THAT SHIT IN THE FRIDGE. DO NOT IMAGINE IT IS PASTA AND PUT OIL AND SALT IN THE WATER. DO NOT USE ANY OLD RECIPE YOU FIND ON THE INTERNET, YOU WILL LIKELY AS NOT PRODUCE THINGS WITH THE TEXTURE AND FLAVOR OF GOLF BALLS. USE THE MIX, DO WHAT IT TELLS YOU TO DO, AND YOU SHOULD GET MATZO BALLS THAT ARE FLUFFY AND DELICIOUS.
If they're not fluffy and delicious, you did it wrong. Don't feel bad about it, everyone fucks up a batch or two of matzo balls in their life! Just don't assume all matzo balls taste like that, because they are, in fact, fluffy. And delicious. Forever.
END SIDESTEP.
Now, dump what seems like...an acceptable amount of the chicken...goddamn it I am so bad at recipes, there should be a pretty solid chicken-to-noodle ratio going on is what I'm saying here...into the pot. (Your extra chicken? Mix it with mayo, salt, pepper, and whole grain mustard to make up for the fact that it's soup chicken and most of its flavor's in the soup, and voila! Chicken salad. THIS IS REALLY MANY MEALS.)
If you're adding matzo balls, add them now, and check your seasoning one last time. THEN EAT THAT SHIT. THE END.