Genius Recipes
This One-Pot Chicken Soup Will Do More Than Warm Your Soul
Comfort and energy in a bowl from Zoe Adjonyoh, starring the holy trinity of Ghanaian cuisine.
Every week in Genius Recipes—often with your help!—Food52 Founding Editor and lifelong Genius-hunter Kristen Miglore is unearthing recipes that will change the way you cook.
This overachiever is really two Genius recipes, and will revolutionize your cooking in so many ways. It will give you a freezable sauce that—in a single step (blend)—can instantly bring life to any dinner that needs it.
And it points to the place you’ll want to unleash that sauce first: a one-pot chicken soup that isn’t just brothy, restorative, and cold-curing in the ways that all good chicken soups are—but also has a feature others can’t claim: energizing.
Both come from chef Zoe Adjonyoh’s recently re-released cookbook Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen and reflect the ways she manifests Ghanaian cuisine in her own home cooking and career.
Zoe distilled the sauce, which she named Chalé, from her father’s everyday cooking routine. “He would whip this up and then literally throw in any type of meat, fish or protein,” Zoe writes in Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen. The flavors of onion, ginger, and chiles, carried into a fiesty tomato sauce, are so foundational, Zoe refers to them as the Ghanaian holy trinity, and dispenses them similarly to Italian passata or Nigerian ata dindin.
But because Zoe ran a supper club and wrote a book for busy home cooks, instead of starting from scratch for every meal, she condensed and froze the first steps in time. By chucking all the ingredients into a blender and storing the deep red sauce in the fridge or freezer, she could be halfway to brightly flavored stews, pastas, and much more. “Use it for okra soup one day, the next time use it for meatballs, another time use it for moussaka or use it for jollof,” Zoe told me. The name Chalé is a nod to both her dad Charles and the Ga word for “friend.”
With Chalé Sauce tucked in the freezer, you have a sly shortcut to the bowl of comfort that is the Ghanaian stew nkrakra, or light soup. "All cultures have this healing, hot, light chicken soup that's economical to make and easy to bulk out," from matzo ball soup to caldo de pollo, Zoe said. "I love that about it—it shows people the connections we have in food culture."
Nkrakra will putter along all afternoon with little intervention from you, anytime you want to warm your belly, soul, and home. You won’t even need to brown the chicken, batch by batch, spattering everything within spatters’ reach—time (and Chalé Sauce) do the work.
When it’s done, the chicken will melt, and the broth will coax you to life. “It’s like you’ve just had a beautiful meditation, like ‘ooh all my energy’s refreshed now’—it’s not the kind of heat that is going to knock your palate out for three days,” Zoe told me. “It’s just a really beautiful, warming, slow-rising heat that’s perfect for winter.”
It's everything January, and especially January 2022, needs: Not just coziness and warmth and peace, but fire.
| 2 | kilograms (4 pounds 8 ounces) or 8-10 bone-in, skinless chicken thighs |
| 3 | tablespoons sustainable red palm oil |
| 1 | onion, finely diced |
| 20 | grams (0.7 ounces) fresh thyme sprigs |
| 4 to 5 | Guinea peppers, cracked open |
| 1 | teaspoon extra-hot chili powder |
| 1 | Scotch bonnet pepper, pierced |
| 3 | garlic cloves, finely diced |
| 2 | teaspoons fine sea salt |
| 300 | milliliters (10 fluid ounces) Chalé Sauce (see below) |
| 750 | milliliters to 1 liter (1 1/4 pints to 1 3/4 pints) good-quality chicken stock |
| Freshly ground black pepper | |
| 2 | inches (5 centimeters) grated fresh ginger |
| 250 | grams (9 ounces) white cabbage, sliced (optional) |
| 100 | grams (3 1/2 ounces) yam, peeled and diced (optional) |
| 100 | grams (3 1/2 ounces) carrots, peeled and diced (optional) |
| Sprig of cilantro, to garnish (optional) | |
| Slightly toasted sourdough bread or fufu, for serving (optional) |
| 2 | kilograms (4 pounds 8 ounces) or 8-10 bone-in, skinless chicken thighs |
| 3 | tablespoons sustainable red palm oil |
| 1 | onion, finely diced |
| 20 | grams (0.7 ounces) fresh thyme sprigs |
| 4 to 5 | Guinea peppers, cracked open |
| 1 | teaspoon extra-hot chili powder |
| 1 | Scotch bonnet pepper, pierced |
| 3 | garlic cloves, finely diced |
| 2 | teaspoons fine sea salt |
| 300 | milliliters (10 fluid ounces) Chalé Sauce (see below) |
| 750 | milliliters to 1 liter (1 1/4 pints to 1 3/4 pints) good-quality chicken stock |
| Freshly ground black pepper | |
| 2 | inches (5 centimeters) grated fresh ginger |
| 250 | grams (9 ounces) white cabbage, sliced (optional) |
| 100 | grams (3 1/2 ounces) yam, peeled and diced (optional) |
| 100 | grams (3 1/2 ounces) carrots, peeled and diced (optional) |
| Sprig of cilantro, to garnish (optional) | |
| Slightly toasted sourdough bread or fufu, for serving (optional) |
| 200 | grams (7 ounces) canned tomatoes or 300 grams (10 ounces) fresh tomatoes |
| 1 | roasted red bell pepper |
| 1 | tablespoon tomato paste |
| 1 | small white onion, roughly diced |
| one | 1-inch/2.5-centimeter piece fresh ginger, grated |
| 1 | small red Scotch bonnet chile (use half and deseed if you have a low heat tolerance, or substitute 1/2 teaspoon cayenne for a milder heat) |
| 1/2 | teaspoon dried chile flakes |
| 2 | garlic cloves (optional) |
| Fine sea salt to taste | |
| 1 | teaspoon extra hot Madras curry powder |
| 1/2 | teaspoon extra hot chili powder |
| 200 | grams (7 ounces) canned tomatoes or 300 grams (10 ounces) fresh tomatoes |
| 1 | roasted red bell pepper |
| 1 | tablespoon tomato paste |
| 1 | small white onion, roughly diced |
| one | 1-inch/2.5-centimeter piece fresh ginger, grated |
| 1 | small red Scotch bonnet chile (use half and deseed if you have a low heat tolerance, or substitute 1/2 teaspoon cayenne for a milder heat) |
| 1/2 | teaspoon dried chile flakes |
| 2 | garlic cloves (optional) |
| Fine sea salt to taste | |
| 1 | teaspoon extra hot Madras curry powder |
| 1/2 | teaspoon extra hot chili powder |
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Written by: Kristen Miglore
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