Reform Jewish Penicillin

Author Notes

When I was growing up, my mother called chicken soup “Jewish Penicillin.” We think of it as the cure for the common cold. Chicken noodle soup is great comfort food, and every Jewish cook has her own best version. Around here (Long Island, NY), it’s made so specifically that our grocery stores carry packaged vegetables and herbs that are called “soup greens.” I think of them as the cake mix of vegetables. If you put them in a big pot with some chicken, water and salt, you’re making home made soup.

Recently I’ve been cooking through the wonderful cookbook “Gran Cocina Latina” by Maricel Presilla. One of the most interesting dishes I made was a rather bland chicken and vegetable stew that was brought alive by the addition of Patagonian Pebre Sauce with Merken, a tomato-onion condiment enhanced with a spicy smoked paprika made by the Mapuche Indians in southern Chile. What I loved about the condiment was that you could add it according to your individual taste. So when my husband had a bad cold, and I made his favorite chicken noodle soup, I stirred a little Pebre sauce into mine, and wow, it was a different soup. The chicken soup part is adapted from my husband’s way of making chicken soup (which he learned from his Yiddish-speaking mother), and the Pebre sauce is lightly adapted from “Gran Cocina Latina.”
—drbabs

Test Kitchen Notes

WHO: Drbabs is a mean baker who grew up in New Orleans.
WHAT: A comforting chicken soup with the boldest stir-in you'll ever meet.
HOW: Chicken soup is business as usual -- then you'll create a bright, spicy sauce flecked with parsley that will change the whole game.
WHY WE LOVE IT: This soup tastes like your mom's chicken noodle went on an exotic trip around the world -- and didn't come back until it had partied in every discothéque, tiki hut, and cabana there was. Consider us reformed. —The Editors