How I Make Soups. Part Deux.

I know some of you reading this have no earthly desire to make your own broth and that’s fine. You just want the recipes for the good, easier stuff, using canned or preferably boxed all natural MSG-free organic broths.  If you are still intrigued by the beauty of doin’ it yourself, great! Today I’m going to introduce meat to the rest of the love in the stock pot. We’ll get to the actual recipes for soup later.

Note: this is my way of doing things. I’ll probably change them as I learn and grow in my cooking but for now, this is working. I have a few REALLY good cook friends who’s brains I pick regularly, but there are never enough hours in the day to talk about all the things I don’t know in the culinary world. So here we go…

Remember how we threw everything in the pot for the veggie broth? How the pot was nice and hot on med-high heat and then when you put everything in it started browning? Same with meat. Get the pot hot with a T (big T denotes Tablespoon, little t is a teaspoon) or so of olive oil.

The next step is crucial for browning your meat because that’s where all of the rich flavor comes from. So take the meat, (let’s say chicken for now, a whole fryer or roaster, 4 lbs-ish) and rinse and pat it dry with paper towels. Liberally salt and pepper – and please – use sea or kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper! There’s no flavor in the pre-ground variety.

Plop the whole bird into the pot breast side down. It should sizzle immediately! If not, your pot wasn’t hot enough. The oil needs to be shimmering. Leave it to brown for a couple of minutes, and then I always give it a quick shake to loosen up the skin from the bottom of the pan. If the oil was hot enough it won’t stick, it will just brown beautifully. 7-8 minutes later, lift a side of the bird to hopefully see some crispiness occurring, just a light golden brown will do. If that lovely earthy color is there, take some tongs and flip the chicken to brown the other side.

Once it’s done, add your other broth ingredients. I stick with the usuals for chicken broth: quartered whole onions skin still on (2), roughly chopped carrots and celery, leaves and all (3 each), whole crushed garlic cloves, 2-10 depending on your garlic obsession, a handful of fresh parsley and thyme, and a T of whole peppercorns. I like the peppercorn medley, there are so many layers of flavor. Also, if you love lemons as much as I, you’ll want to halve one, squeeze it’s juice in, and then throw either half or the whole rind in. I do the whole then pull it out halfway, much like I did the fennel in the veg broth. The idea here is to meld the flavors and not have one prominent.

Cover all of this with water plus a little more. Bring it to a boil, cover it, bring the heat down to med-low. Your pot should be simmering, gently bubbling, for at least an hour and a half. I usually let mine go for a couple of hours because the chicken just falls right off the bone, making it so much easier to pick the meat and get it into the soup itself.

Let the broth cool. It will need a good half hour at least. Then with your tongs, pull the chicken out carefully, yes it’s limbs will probably fall off. Get them all and put them in a big pot. Let it cool, and then start picking the meat off. While you’re doing that, your broth should be cooling off too so that you can then (triple) strain it in your sieve and toss the cooked veggies.

Now you have the basis for some darn good chicken soup. Recipes to come. If you can call them that… I’m a pinch, handful, dash-er… if you know what I mean. C’est la vie!

How I Make Soups. Part 1.

I’ve had a lot of women asking me for my “recipes” as of late, and instead of trying to directly respond via message to each individually, I thought I’d share my love in a more general scape. Here you go internet, all of my not-so-secret weapons in preparing a beautifully planned and executed, healthy dinner in a bowl.

First things first. You must have a good heavy bottomed stock pot. My mom bought me the 12 qt Wolfgang Puck model I own several years ago when I first fell in love with making my own veggie broth. It still looks brand new and I’ve used it. I googled and averaged $35 for one similar to mine.  Getting to basics, the reason you need that heavy bottom is to evenly distribute the heat to the food. It is crucial, you will never get a good browning on anything without it and you’ll spend your time scraping burnt food out of it. Pay the money for a decent one.

Before I get to the fun stuff, I need to tell you, I am in no way a self-proclaimed good cook. I am a voracious reader with pretty fair comprehension skills, and when the planets align and I follow directions thoroughly I can concoct a decent meal gathered from a handful of worthy recipes. That is really the enjoyable part to me, creating my own take, adding what I want to the symphony of flavors. For example, I can’t seem to get enough garlic. If I print 3-5 cloves, minced, in my own galley, 7-8 go in the pot. At least. I try to add the garlic when Nate‘s not looking because of the wary eye he throws me when he sees how much I’ve chopped. That’s important for you to know because one of the first great cooks I personally knew was my friend and recently published author Hal, who told me long ago that massive amounts of garlic and fresh ground black pepper can make anything taste delectable. That theory has yet to be proven wrong.

Ready, set, go!

I’m starting as basic as it gets with the broth because it is the backbone of everything! There’s not a brand (of which I’m aware) on the market that compares. I say so, because there’s nothing like the love you put in personally to make it taste better. On that note, there’s nothing better than using local organic ingredients to amplify the sweet savoriness. It becomes soul food.

Today I tried veggies other than the usual for my broth, and I was so impressed by it’s rich flavor. It was the muse for this post, in fact.

Usually I’ve only used whole quartered peel-still-on onions, carrots, peppercorns, celery (leaves and all) and fresh parsely, thyme, several whole crushed garlic cloves, and a couple of bay leaves (and sometimes tomatoes if I know I’ll be using the broth for a minestrone type soup). This batch consists of cremini mushrooms, yellow bell pepper, a half bulb of fennel (I used half and then took it out halfway through, It’s pungent), peppercorns, onions as I described above, carrots, lots of crushed garlic, celery, a handful of fresh Italian parsley & thyme, 2 bay leaves and about 2 tablespoons of kosher (or sea) salt.  The salt is up to you, again, as is everything according to your taste. Nate likes salty. Me not so much so I do a little and let him salt at the table if need be.

Many recipes say to add all of this to a pot, cover with water, boil, reduce heat, bring to a low simmer for an hour.

No… you’re losing all of the flavor by doing that! The beauty of throwing everything in there and browning it first over a med-high heat is that you get the good stuff out of the stuff BEFORE adding the water. Then it all melds and intensifies and makes music in the pot. I nearly passed out this morning from the intoxicating aroma.  So please, put a couple of Tablespoons of good olive oil in the stock pot and heat it till it shimmers and smells warm and nutty, and then throw in everything but the garlic. Let all of the veggies get all aromatic and hot and then add the crushed cloves. Let them cook for about a minute and add the water to cover the veggies. Now let it come to a boil, and when it does, turn the heat to low and cover. Let it simmer as long as you want, but for at the very least, an hour. Mine went for almost 3.  Sidenote: Today I did not have any, or I would have thrown a splash of good white wine (chardonnay) in this mix before the water, and let that cook down for a minute.

Strain everything when it’s done in a sieve. I triple strain mine actually. It comes out velvety and savory, even healing, I promise.

And that’s that for Part 1.