Old World Chicken Soup

By eleonore • September 30, 2009 • 0 Comments

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Author Notes: When I was eight years old, my family immigrated to the States (from Germany) and that's about the time my mother made chicken soup every Friday since chicken was relatively inexpensive and a entire family (five people) could be fed. (We did have chicken soup in Germany - but very rarely due to the expense.) Chicken Soup was never a favorite of mine since we had it on a regular basis and my mother would use rice instead of noodles most of the time - when she did use noodles, I loved it. Fast forward - I started making my own Chicken Soup for my family (not every week - maybe 3 to 4 times a year and it definitely is one of our favorite meals. I still use my mothers ingredients (she never used recipes) and had to come up with my own recipe which I use all the time now. My Chicken Soup (as my mother's) is not part of a meal, it's the whole meal - protein, starch and vegetable (chicken, noodles and carrots). You'll notice that I don't use a whole chicken instead I use leg quarters because they offer dark meat and the most amount of bones which gives it the flavor and richness. Hope you'll enjoy it as much as we do. - eleonore

Serves 4-6

4 quarts water
6 chicken leg quarters (leg & thigh) - rinse
2 pounds carrots - peel, rinse and cut into 1 inch pieces
1 large yellow onion - peel and leave whole
2 cloves garlic - peel and leave whole
4 celery stalks - rinse and cut into 1 inch pieces
1 tablespoon dried parsley
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon ground pepper
1 teaspoon sugar
1 large tomato - rinse and cut into 4 pieces

Using an 8 quart soup pot - put rinsed chicken into pot and add 4 quarts of water and put on stove over medium flame. At this point, you can add the onion, garlic, parsley, tomato and cover with lid leaving a little opening so as not to boil over.
Once water starts to boil, foam/scum will gather on top - remove foam/scum as it gathers.
Lower flame to the lowest setting and cook for about 1-1/2 hours and then add carrots, celery, salt, pepper, sugar and cook for another 1-1/2 hours on very low flame with lid on - again leave a little opening.
Soup should be done and chicken meat should be ready to fall off of bone. Make sure to taste and add seasoning if needed. At this point, I remove the whole onion and also try to find the 2 garlic cloves and remove them and discard.
In a separate pot cook your favorite noodles (not rice) according to instructions - I prefer to use a kluski type of noodle.
When noodles are ready, put noodles into soup bowl, add soup (including carrots and chicken meat - you can remove meat from bones or leave meat on the bones, which I prefer).
Tip: Before serving, try to remove as much chicken fat from top as possible - if serving soup the next day, remove the rest of the fat before heating soup. Enjoy!