Chicken Soup Redux

You know you’ve been blogging too much when you start to repeat yourself. Similarly, you start to repeat yourself when you’ve been blogging too much. Nothing illustrates this better than chicken soup.

In February I posted Charitable Chicken Soup for my Roommate’s Soul which featured an Epicurious chicken soup recipe that I can’t seem to locate now but which doesn’t matter because I posted the recipe on my original post. You know you’ve been blogging too much when you start to repeat yourself.

Yet that post only showed the end product, ignoring the journey. Tonight I take you on that journey. Won’t you come along?

This is one of the only recipes I can shop for without a shopping list. I know it by heart. If I were to get a Palm Pilot (I had one, but I gave it to my brother) I would use it to store recipes. Then I could go to the grocery store with just my Palm Pilot and if I saw an ingredient in season I could pull up a recipe and get all the right ingredients. If you’d like to send me a Palm Pilot e-mail me, and I’ll provide you with my address.

Many people are afraid of raw chicken. Don’t be. Turn the sink on before opening the package, open the package, touch the chicken to your heart’s content and then immediately wash your hands. No harm no fowl. Haha. Get it? Fowl?

Put a cut up chicken in the pot:

Once my great-grandmother (Grandma Helen, who died ten years ago and is sorely missed) took my brother and I to Nester’s in Boca Raton and ordered for herself Chicken in a Pot. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a whole chicken in a pot with soup. Kind of like this except I take the chicken out.

Next, cover with broth:

Now I know what you’re saying. “Egads, Amateur Gourmet! Why don’t you make your OWN stock?” I know, I know, I know. That goes on the list of things I should do but don’t do but will do. Satisfied?

Make sure the chicken is covered:

And bring to a boil.

Cover with half the lid and simmer for 20 minutes. Lauren had on Fresh Prince of Bel-Air which I hadn’t seen in a long time. But I was busy chopping vegetables:

After 20 minutes, the chicken should be done:

Remove to a bowl:

At this point, the recipe says to let everything cool. But I was hungry. And I’m impatient. So I began tearing the chicken apart with my fingers. Ow. It hurt.

I then resorted to a knife. It still hurt. Did you know the pointy part is for cutting not for holding?

Ah yes, and now for the secret killer ingredient: fresh dill.

The first time I encountered dill in my adult life, separate and alone, I sniffed it and said aloud: “Holy Toledo, Batman! This smells like chicken soup.”

All my memories of chicken soup smell like dill. I can’t separate dill from chicken soup in my mind. Some places put dill in salad and that’s fine but it still tastes like chicken soup. And that’s a great thing. It’s like God, in Her infinite wisdom, decided to proffer a plant that would make soup taste fresh and delicious. All I can say to that is: Amen, sista friend.

So you add your vegetables and let simmer for 8 minutes. Then you add the chicken, the noodles…

…and the dill:

Doesn’t this soup look delicious?

And it tasted delicious too:

This is just one of those things worth making. It’s worth getting a cold for. If I were you, I’d run to your nearest hospital and make out with everyone there, run home, and make this soup. It’s entirely worth it.