4 Levels of Chicken Soup: Amateur to Food Scientist | Epicurious

hi I'm John and I'm a level one chef I'm Gabriella and I'm a level two chef I'm Frank and I've been a chef for 23 years this is actually my mother's recipe and she always made it for us in the winter when neither we were sick or it was cold I love to eat this in the winter this is my go-to for pleasing other people and making a nice hearty stock my recipe for chicken soups is slightly different than most people's chicken soup it's kind of a mix of my grandmother's in my own recipe let's start with the chicken I like to use whole chicken breasts with a bone in to flavor my chicken soup I find that the flavor adds another texture another richness to the soup that you don't get if you're just using the chicken without the bone I prefer in my chicken soup to use strictly the legs and that's just because that's the way my dad has always done it for my recipe I like to use whole chickens you get not only the bones to make the broth or the stock but you also get the meat for the soup so the first thing I do is take off the wings and then we're gonna take off the breasts and the thighs I cut on both sides of the breastbone and I'm just gonna take the meat away from the bone okay so I take off the breasts I'm gonna put them over here cut the thigh and the leg apart there's some connective tissue in there that actually adds some gelatin to the soup that's gonna give it that nice kind of rich almost like a little bit of stickiness I like to use chicken breast because it has a lot of that great white meat you could swap it out for drumsticks or thigh meat but I really like how the breast has a lot of white meat you're more than welcome to make chicken soup with any other part but I really like the dark meat I think it gives it a nice hearty flavor and add some extra fattiness to it to get ready to make my stock for my soup I'm gonna roast these chicken bones it's gonna draw out some of the fat it's gonna concentrate some of the flavor in the chicken and it's going to turn nice and golden brown I'm gonna roast these bones for stock and I actually keep this skin on the chicken as it cooks in the soup and I feel like your flavors it as well adds a little fat but then I'll go ahead and remove the skin before I'm ready to serve it okay so my bones are roasted they have a really nice brown color to them I have them just so that the juices have reduced a little and stuck to the bottom of the pan this is called a Fond Fon D and it's kind of the foundation for a lot of good sauces and stocks so in order to get some of this nice these nice brown bits of this Fond off on the bottom of the pan I'm gonna put a little water on it and put it aside and let it sit okay so now I'm going to make my base bras are super easy because you just kind of put everything in all at once I'm using a standard mirepoix fancy word for celery carrots and onions I'm gonna take a little bit that chicken fat that I saved from my last batch and put it into my pot I add my onions in got a bachelor little garlic up this goes into the pot as well my celery and go my carrot and we're gonna let that just lightly Brown a little so once my vegetables start to get a little color to them we're gonna add some tomato paste and we're gonna do something that the French call pin saj and that just means basically lightly browning your tomato paste and then I'm going to go ahead and put in my chicken I'm gonna add all the bones and all of the juice to this all into the pot and we're gonna add our water we're gonna in enough water just to cover our bones at this point I'm gonna let it come to a simmer and then I'm gonna add all of my flavors so my salt and my peppercorns I'm gonna put a bay leaf in parsley just gonna tear it up we have a little bit of thyme I'm not too worried about putting these in whole because I'm gonna strain this out later so I'm gonna actually let this boil and then once it reaches a boil I'm gonna turn it down to low and let it simmer for 45 minutes to an hour so my stock has been simmering for about an hour hour and 15 minutes and it's reduced a little you can see that my bones and my chicken is is cooked if we've done our job right all the vegetables and the chicken will have given up their flavor to the stop so we're gonna strain it taking out all the chickens I'm gonna go ahead and shred it so this is the messy part obviously you do want to be careful to not get any of the tendons I'm just gonna try and be pretty thorough that none of that's coming through so now that I have my stock we're gonna assemble the soup so I have an array of vegetables and herbs here that all go into the soup carrots celery onion turn parsnip and then I do a mix of dill and fresh parsley super simple really tasty you can actually find all of these ingredients usually packaged together in the vegetable aisle of your supermarket labeled under soup kit I have a little bit of butcher twine it's just cotton butcher twine and these are kind of the same herbs I put in my stock this is just gonna reinforce that flavor so I take the parsley I take the time and I'm just gonna tie those up it's gonna be easy to fish out when I want to take it out so first up our chicken breast just so you don't have to touch them got a handy-dandy fork here really simple throw that right in the pot I always like to start a little bit with onions I like them to be slightly more done than the rest onions always onions gonna have my carrots so call it my celery then our veggies carrots celery onions turnip and parsnip saffron it really makes a difference as a beautiful flavor to it and some fun color so I'm gonna add some tomato product tomato product just being some pureed Tomatoes and this is again just gonna add a little more body to my soup it's gonna add a little more richness tomatoes also add a little bit of acid then I have my time and last but not least to really bring home the Mediterranean flavors I'm trying to work with today I'm gonna go ahead and put in the rosemary a little bit more salt some a little fresh cracked black pepper I'm gonna add my bouquet garni and then I'm gonna add my stock and unless but not least we have our herbs I like to use a nice bunch of dill and a nice bunch of fresh parsley and water so enough water to fully cover all the vegetables all the herbs the chicken and last but not least some salt and you can see that I'm not putting a ton of salt in it every time I'm just hitting it a little here and there I'm gonna go ahead and make sure that my broth is coming back up to a boil and then I'm going to add in the white wine the veggies that I prep and then the chicken that I shredded I prefer a dry white wine I think that that works really nicely with kind of the hardiness of this soup the saffron just adds just this fun little element of like witness who is she she's saffron gonna let this come to a simmer and then we're gonna add our chicken this is the chicken that we butchered earlier we've roasted in the oven didn't cook it all the way we cooked it about 3/4 of the way we're gonna add a little water all I really want to do is release that fondue those brown bits on the bottom of this pan so while the water sits I'm gonna drop my chicken into the soup so I'm taking all these little brown bits off the bottom of my pan I'm neezy gonna end up in this soup now my soup is really going it's been simmering for about an hour hour and a half and I've went ahead and removed the herbs we're gonna go ahead and find our chicken breasts gonna remove the skin and then take off all the bones because I only want that really juicy white meat I like this to be chunky because I find that it adds a nice texture and bite which when you go in and get that nice big spoonful of chicken soup add it right back into that soup now I'm gonna add in some more xot orso's in the pasta it's boiling gonna do that for 10 minutes until it's al dente you're gonna get a little bit in every bite but it's not gonna be the main focus I like to use these medium pasta shells and I like them cooked in the broth so that over about 10-15 minutes they really get nice and soft so while the soup is cooking I'm gonna make my dumplings and I'm gonna add into the soup it's a very simple recipe cracking egg into the bowl a little bit of that chicken fat delicious it's gonna bolster up that chicken flavor we're gonna add some flour and a little bit of black pepper fresh cracked if possible and we're just going to mix it up this is the consistency I'm looking for it's a little sticky fairly firm and it holds up by itself now that I have my dumpling batter ready I'm gonna remove the chicken just comes right out of the pot I'm also gonna take out my bouquet garni because that does not taste good nobody wants to eat string in their soup so we're gonna leave this on on fairly low heat and then we're gonna add our dumplings just take spoonfuls just plop them in and once they start to float well give them another couple of minutes so that they have time to cook now I'm gonna go ahead and add in the secret ingredient the lemon juice it's gonna make it taste really zesty and lemony and Greek it's been about 15 minutes so I'm gonna go ahead and try my pasta mmm perfect it's infused with the flavors of the broth just how I like it my dumplings are floating to the top so I know they're ready and now we're gonna move on to the final step adding the chicken so we take it just gets put in their soup and once it comes back up to a simmer or ready to go sad and my soup is fully cooked let's serve up a bowl there's little a big scoop out it's a really chunky soup which I love I'm gonna get a nice helping of that chicken and the chickens kind of make that base for us and then we're gonna take a couple of those nice dumplings and plop them on top I try to get a mix of the veggies the meat and the noodles for my toppings I'm gonna add a little bit of chives parsley a tarragon just some soft herbs to give it a little bit of freshness I like to do a little bit of salt a little bit of pepper some grated cheese pecorino romano parmigiano-reggiano whatever you have and then of course cuz it's chicken soup you need to have some crushed up saltines I'm going to top this with some lemon zest and parsley the lemon zest is just gonna add a little extra zing to the flavor it's gonna really bring home that lemon juice that we added into the broth and there's my chicken soup hot let's not use that please with a final cut and this is my chicken soup and this is my chicken soup and this is my chicken soup all right here we go I came out nice really nice mm I'm happy with that mmm oho good taste just like mom's the lemon and the white wine and the broth so good it's not necessarily what you would have liked with your grandmother cooking it's a little nicer than that but it's still kind of soul satisfying it I don't think I would change anything to be honest I mean the way that I do it it's pretty simple and I'm really happy with how it turned out we saw three different chefs make three different chicken soups John use chicken breast Gabriele used drumsticks and Frank used a whole chicken well pretty much any part of a chicken can be used to make chicken soup whole chicken or darker cuts of meat like the thighs or drumsticks work best white meats as found in chicken breast is mild and taste and benefits when additional meaty flavor components are added to the soup dark meat is more game-like in flavor and has higher iron calories and fat when compared to white meat because many flavor compounds are fat soluble dark meat tends to be juicier due to its increased fat content using a combination of the dark meat and the white meat can heighten the taste of your finished product John and Gabrielle made a broth while Frank made a stock a broth is water similar vegetables aromatics and meats and can include some bones I find as a bone gives it just a little extra hearty flavor a stock replaces the meats with bones and is usually simmered for a longer period of time done abroad they extract collagen from the connective tissue and bones and act as a thickening agents for his base Frank roasted a deboned chicken carcass and mayor browning contributed new mommy characteristics to the taste of the meat tomato paste was also included in Frank's base tomatoes give my soup a little more body and weight the sugars in the tomatoes caramelized creating a rich earthy flavor that want me found in John or Gabrielle's basis all three chefs cook their soup on a stovetop its radiant and conductive heat extracts all the flavors from the ingredients which in turn marry together to create a flavorful fortified broth John added turnips for an earthy sweet flavor and parsnips for some nuttiness you'd be remiss if you didn't add it gabriele soup had saffron and white wine smells delish saffron provides a musky floral honey-like flavor the white wine added acidity lightness and complexity to her soup enhances the overall flavor profile Frank added chicken fat bay leaves and crushed tomatoes to this soup the crushed tomatoes add acidity bulk and color jarnia's pasta shells in his soup Gabriele use orzo and Frank made dumplings status' like these ball cup soups are great at stopping up flavor and break the monotony of the chicken the amount of liquid of starch is able to absorb and how concentrated the starch grains are in the liquid affect the thickness of the final dish John topped his soup of grated cheese and crushed crackers the cheese added umami and savoriness offering complexity while enhancing the taste of the other ingredients Gabriele used lemon juice the secret ingredients lemon zest and parsley to finish hirsute lemon brighten the soup and its acidity added a refreshing aftertaste parsley is not assertive but it gives the soup a light fresh taste and look Frank also topped his super tender herbs in addition to parsley he added tarragon which has an anis like taste and chives which have a mild onion flavor whether you're battling the common cold or just looking to make a savory meal hopefully these tips can help you out the next time you're making your own chicken soup [Music]

Channel: Epicurious

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Rating: 4.8919053 out of 5

Keywords: chicken soup, chefs, chicken soup recipe, expert chicken soup, food scientist, food science, amateur chef, expert chef, make chicken soup, best chicken soup, gourmet chicken soup, chicken soup test, basic chicken soup, perfect chicken soup, chicken soup tutorial, chicken soup ingredients, chicken noodle soup, chicken soup sick, making chicken soup, how to chicken soup, pro chicken soup, professional chicken soup, chicken soup hack, chicken soup remedy, epicurious

Id: QzWbrmbdekU

Length: 14min 10sec (850 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 30 2019