I made the best chicken soup of my life a few days ago, and I don't even know how I did it.
Which really bugs me, because now I don't know how to replicate it. I didn't use a recipe, but somehow it turned out amazingly flavorful, with this sweet and fragrant aftertaste. A very far cry from the first chicken soup I tried to make, which was flat and flavorless, with tough little chunks of chicken in it.
I made it because Garry was sick (second time in 5 months). I'm going to try to recount the steps I took for future reference:
- Chopped up one VERY large onion and put it in the stockpot to fry.
- Meanwhile, chopped up 3 stalks of rather old celery. Added that, then peeled and chopped 2 large carrots. I added salt and pepper and let the mirepoix render down for a long time, probably 20-25 min., while I gathered the other ingredients.
- I had some leftover green parts from two leeks I had used last week. I washed them and threw them into the pot, whole (planning to fish them out later)
- I added a can of regular Swanson chicken broth. I hated using the stuff because it's practically radioactive, but that's all they had at the Mexican market. Normally I would have used TJ's chicken broth or chicken bones.
- I added water. Don't ask me how much. Enough to kind of cover the ingredients, though I added more over the course of cooking as it evaporated.
- I washed whatever leftover Italian flat-leaf parsley I had and threw the stalks in, whole.
- I added several healthy shakes of oregano and thyme, plus one bay leaf. I really wanted to add some chicken bones so I took the leftover crispy chicken I had from the Chinese restaurant I went to on Friday night and pulled the little bits of bone from it and threw that in too. I let everything stew for another long while.
- Meanwhile I took some leftover Costco rotisserie chicken breast, along with leftover Chinese crispy chicken breast, and cut into cubes, then set aside.
- This is where it gets hazy for me. I can't remember if I added any other herbs. But when the soup was looking pretty good and smelling very nice, I started fishing out the leek greens, parsley and chicken bones.
- I had two leftover frozen Pillsbury Grands biscuits I had been saving for just this purpose. Tore them up and stuck them in, for dumplings.
- Tossed in some orzo. Not very much.
- I tossed in the chicken.
- Let it all simmer (it kind of boiled a bit too) for a little while. I was worried about the chicken getting too tough. I hate tough chicken in soup.
- It was smelling great, and after tasting it I added a bit more salt to taste, but I didn't like how thin it was. I had some half-and-half and poured a little bit in at a time, until the color looked just a tad creamy.
- After a few min though the cream started scumming across the top. I was like, oh crap, I need something to keep it evenly distributed. I had just watched an episode of Alton Brown's stewing techniques, so I knew that cornstarch would not be a good option for this.
- I had no arrowroot on hand, so I decided to go with flour. From the episode I knew that dumping in flour just like that would make it clump horribly. So put a tablespoon or two of flour in a small bowl and mixed it with and almost equal amt. of water. When it was like a glue, I added a bit of the soup broth and kept mixing, and added more, until I had a thick liquid. THEN I poured the liquid slowly into the stockpot, and mixed until it started thickening and coming together very nicely.
- I can't tell you how I knew when it was "done," but at some point I had to stop because I was late meeting a friend up in the city. So that was that!