A Soup Lost, But Not Forgotten

Passport & Plate - Grandma Marion's Chicken Soup

USA | Monday, February 24, 2014 | 5 photos

Ingredients
4-5 lb. chicken, dressed
2 Tbsp. Salt
3 large stalks celery
4 large carrots, peeled
1 cube chicken bouillon
Dill
Pepper to taste
1 Pkg. Fine egg noodles

 

How to prepare this recipe
First of all, this recipe is definitely not for the squeamish. If you're not used to preparing your own meat hat is still in animal form, you'll be on quite an adventure.

Begin by cutting the chicken open along its spine. It's easier this way than trying to hack through the sternum. Remove the heart, liver, neck, and whatever other organs may still be inside the bird. Put aside and save for later. Wash the bird in cold water, then peel off the skin and trim off any excess fat. You won't need this anymore, so toss it. Cut the chicken into quarters.

Wrap innards in cheesecloth and tie excess in a knot or secure with butcher's thread. You'll be using the innards in the broth and won't want them just floating aimlessly around to fish out later.

Fill a six-quart pot with water. If, when you put the chicken pieces in, the water gets too high, bail some out so that it won't overflow when boiling. Add the salt and set to boil. Once boiling, add the chicken and innards. Cover and cook for 30 minutes, skimming the top frequently for fat and foam.

Wash your vegetables and peel the carrots. Remove the heads of the carrots if necessary.

After 30 minutes, skim once more and add the vegetables. Boil for one hour. Once the hour is up, remove the chicken and vegetables. Discard the celery and slice the carrots. Put the chicken aside. Return sliced carrots to the broth.

Add a cube of chicken bouillon, a dash of pepper, and the leaves from a few sprigs of dill. The dill will enhance the broth's aroma. Boil the egg noodles in a separate pot. Due to their small size, they won't take long to cook– around five minutes. Shred the chicken and put back in the broth. The breast meat is ideal to use as it separates into bigger pieces. Don't try to reuse all the chicken in the soup – only a little bit is needed. If there was any skin left on the bird, do not include it. Strain the noodles and add them to the broth. Serve hot, garnished with a few extra dill leaves and pepper.

 

The story behind this recipe
As a child, trips to my Grandma Marion's house always revolved around food. Walking up the front steps to her porch, a variety of tantalizing aromas would waft out of her open kitchen window, beckoning in passersby for a visit. She would always be cooking one traditional Jewish food or another – noodle kugel, blintzes, matzo balls. But the one thing that had my nose captivated the second I opened the car door was her chicken noodle soup.

I remember sitting in her small kitchen, watching her every move as she crafted this soup by hand. She used a raw, whole hen as the base and never hesitated to tell it who was boss, excavating its innards bare-handed and cutting into its bones without batting an eye. She may have looked soft on the outside in her flowered housedress, but on the inside, Grandma Marion was tough as nails and had total command over her kitchen and everything in it, be it recipe, person, or chicken carcass.

For a hungry kid, the soup took an eternity to make. The chicken boiled for an excessive amount of time and my grandma was constantly opening the lid on it to skim off the fat and the meat's bubbly residue. It was hard for me to wait to taste it. But when she finally put it on the table, the first spoonful was always worth the wait. The soup, light yellow in hue, was savory and full of flavor. More experience than meal, its memory would stay with me for the rest of my life.

When Grandma Marion passed away in 2010, her chicken noodle soup ceased to be. Having most often pulled the recipe from memory, she was not known to have kept a hard copy, taking the soup's secrets with her to her grave. But after snooping through some of her old cook books, I found a concoction that was similar to the one I remembered her making. It wasn't exact; some of the ingredients differed. But I knew that if I used it as a starting point and then added in my own memories of the soup and the woman who made it, I could make a dish that was just as good as grandma's.