How To Make a Restorative Bowl of Chicken Soup

Last Thanksgiving, I got an atrocious head cold. Nothing too devastating, and we weren’t hosting, but it was enough to keep us home.

Whenever I get sick, John makes real chicken soup. No shortcuts. Soup made from a chicken and homemade chicken stock. I don’t know why this soup is a healing soup, it just is, in a “the sky is blue” sort of way.

Making the Soup

We always have homemade chicken stock in the freezer, thanks to our stock bag habit (eat chicken, put the bones in the freezer, repeat until you have a big bag full of frozen bones, make stock), so once you have that you’re halfway there.

Then you gently poach a whole chicken in that stock until it is *just* cooked. You have now created a double stock and you have a bunch of cooked chicken. Amazing.

Finally, you introduce a vegetable element. This is usually of the onion, celery, carrot variety, but this time we used onion, carrot, Gilfeather turnip, and celery root (the last two choices were dictated by our CSA share). Parsnips are also very decent in chicken soup, as are turnips. Simmer your chosen vegetables in the broth until tender.

We sometimes add Madras curry powder to our chicken soup for more complexity, and also because it gives the soup a beautiful golden color befitting the chicken.

The Magic Is in the Bowl

Strong ginger-lemon toddies are a long-standing remedy in our house. The basic formula: peel and thinly slice a thumb-sized piece of ginger, place in a mug, fill two-thirds of the mug with boiling water, cover with a saucer, and let the ginger steep for four or five minutes. Then add bourbon, lemon juice, and honey to taste. We have tried simmering the ginger in water as well, but steeping really does produce the best flavor.

We eat a lot of exceptional Vietnamese soups in Portland at small, family-owned restaurants, and other than the euphoria you get after gulping down a bowl of phở dặc biệt or bún bò huế, our favorite thing about these soups is that you customize your own bowl with a variety of flavorful garnishes.

There’s chili paste, fish sauce, and fresh herbs on the table, and it’s your job to make your bowl taste as perfect as you think it can be. One of our favorite establishments stocks each table with a ramekin of raw garlic paste. When you add a spoonful (or two) to your soup, the garlic cooks ever so gently in the piping-hot broth.

Taking inspiration from hot toddies and cues from our favorite soup joints, John started adding raw, sinus-clearing aromatics to each bowl for a truly “medicinal-strength” chicken soup. After several cold seasons, the list of additions now include: a healthy dose of microplaned ginger and garlic, thinly sliced serrano chile and mustard greens, and a judicious spoonful of fried chile paste. Just as with toddies, the piping-hot soup is infused with the flavor of the aromatics, which are tempered by the heat but still fresh, spicy, and vibrant. Then, we top with soft herbs, crunchy garnishes, and a generous squeeze of lemon or lime. The bracing ginger and mustard, coupled with fresh and fried chile heat, is a wonderful combination for clearing the head and warming up.

How To Build Your Bowl

1. Grate a clove of garlic and at least 1/2 inch chunk of fresh ginger root into your bowl with a microplane. Add more depending on your taste (I like a full inch of ginger grated into my bowl). You could add grated fresh turmeric, too.
2. Think about what else might make your bowl more awesome and add it:
   1. chopped green onion
   2. chili paste (we use a very spicy Thai chili paste, pictured above, and highly recommend it, but start small because it will hurt you if you don’t treat it with respect)
   3. fish sauce
   4. thinly sliced serrano or jalapeño pepper
   5. a handful (yes, handful) of chopped arugula or mustard greens

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3. Cook up some noodles. Never cook the noodles in the soup itself. Cook them separately and add them to each bowl—this will keep your leftover chicken soup from being full of sogged-out noodles. Egg noodles are classic, but we use whatever pasta odds and ends we have, from bowties to elbows. Put the cooked noodles in your bowl.

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4. Get your soup boiling hot, then ladle it into your bowl. It will “cook” the garlic and ginger. Stir things up to disperse all the seasonings you added in step 2.

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5. Garnish with soft fresh herbs like parsley, celery leaves, and cilantro.

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6. If you like, top with something crunchy, like fried shallots or crispy chicken skin (see below).

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7. Serve with plenty of lime or lemon wedges.

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8. Tuck in. Be revived.

A Crunchy Upgrade

John also makes chicken cracklins for garnishing our bowls. Remove the skin from the whole chicken before you poach it and spread it out on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Then very lightly season it with salt and top it with another piece of parchment and a second baking sheet that nests inside the first one.

Bake the chicken skin at 350°F for about 40 minutes or until it’s golden and crispy. Crush the crispy chicken skins over your soup (just trust me).

If that seems like too much work, or if you run out of crispy chicken skin before you have made your way through the soup, store-bought fried shallots will do the trick. Adding cracklins and fried shallots is certainly an option too!