Jewish Chicken Soup Recipe

When I was a designer I used to work for a Jewish company. One lunchtime a colleague of mine opened a flask of chicken soup and offered me some.  Having never tried Jewish chicken soup before I didn't know what to expect. It was wonderful, really tasty and hearty. My colleague kindly gave me her families chicken soup recipe and I have now been making it for over 10 years.  My children love it and whenever I'm not feeling 100% I tend to make chicken soup. Whats so great about the recipe is that its easy and cheap to make, the ingredients are easily obtained and its flexible in terms of adding other ingredients. My colleague didn't pass on the recipe for Jewish dumplings so have never made the soup with them, however I have used pearly barley, rice, lentils and potatoes. I hope you like it as much as I do.

Mama's Chicken Soup

Ingredients

1/2 a chicken

4 large carrots peeled and chunkily chopped

1/2 swede

1 large onion

3 sticks of celery

4 chicken stock cubes (Telma or Knorr)

1 spoonful of white sugar (or to taste)

3 pints of water

Flat leaf parsley

Seasoning

Method

• Clean the chicken and place in a very large saucepan with all the other ingredients except the parsley, sugar and stock cubes.
• Bring to just below boiling point - very importantly at this stage be sure to skim the soup, there will be white fat appearing which should be spooned off.
• Leave to cook on a very low light for 3 hours (this is the secret, 'the lower the light the richer the taste', just enough heat to have a very smooth simmer.
• The next stage is to add the stock cubes and season with salt and pepper, I use stock cubes and seasoning to taste, if it tastes watery add more stock cubes and seasoning until you are satisfied with the flavour (add the stock cubes one by one, don't worry if you don't add all four, add them to your own preferred taste).
• Add the sugar and parsley and bring to the boil.
• Remove the onion as this is now no longer needed and if left in will make the soup go cloudy (I sometimes leave the onion in as it breaks up nicely and adds more texture, again this is up to you).
• Searve piping hot.

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