Chicken soup 101

This is not a recipe. Here's some general guidance for making a chicken soup:

Buy a whole chicken and a roughly equal quantity of vegetables (by raw weight). Any vegetables are fine but definitely get some form of onion in there. Dry noddles or any other dry grains are nice, but you won't need much because of how much they expand during cooking. Get whatever spices you want, but turmeric makes chicken soup look especially pretty. Maybe buy fresh herbs for garnish, and/or a little lemon to squeeze in.

Put your chicken in a big pot, along with any giblets that came with it. If you have any old aromatic vegetables (onions, carrots, celery, etc) hanging around that aren't super good anymore, you could throw those in but I wouldn't waste good fresh veggies on this step. Cover with water, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and cook until the chicken is fall-apart tender, 1-2 hours.

While you're waiting, cut up all your vegetables. Remember they'll shrink when cooking, so cut the chunks a little larger than how you want them.

Pull the chicken out and let it cool. Fish or strain out any remaining inedible solids. Dump in the vegetables along with a couple pinches of salt (be conservative — you can add more to taste later) and simmer until they're soft, 30-60 minutes. If you need to add more water to keep everything submerged, that's fine, but keep in mind the veg will release a lot of water as it cooks. You can always add more later.

If you're using dry noodles or rice or some such, throw that in when you're about 30 minutes from the end. Put in less than you think you'll want — it'll expand 2-3x as it cooks.

While you're waiting, pick all the meat off of the chicken — using your fingers will allow you to feel for any bones, cartilage or slimy bits you don't want to eat. (If you want, you can brown all these scraps in the oven and then simmer them for a second stock you can use later.) Roughly chop through your pile of picked meat so that you won't have any super-long strings of shredded chicken in the final soup. Put the meat back into the soup before you taste for seasoning.

Taste for seasoning. Add salt and any spices you like to taste. You could also stir in some fresh herbs and maybe a little lemon juice (or vinegar) to taste, or you could let people do that in their individual bowls.

[RandomDudeOne]

If you can find a stewing hen all the better. Stewing hens are older chickens that can no longer lay eggs. They are tough birds only suitable for stews or soups but they have a lot more flavor. They have to be simmered a long time to be tender.

[eddiespagetti]

I cooked for 120 people in a rehabilitation center. I made chicken soup in a 300 liter pot. I would sweat the carrots celery and onion with the 4-6 chickens. . I remove skin and let the soup simmer for hours. After remove all bones I add my spagetinni or spagetti in 1/2 inch lengths. Chicken noodle soup. The clients loved it. I am the soup man. Eddie spagetti. Thanks for share. I love soup. I miss make soup. Soup is good. Soup is my fave food. Soup is beautiful. The world is full of cowards and greedy sheep. Soup makes me happy. Soothes my angry soul. What a coward nation indeed

[masonme]

first ever chicken noodles soup I tried to make I learned that "expanding noodle" lesson the hard way. Cooked the soup all day long, and put in like an entire bag of egg noodles for the last 30 minutes. Came back to find a solid gelatinous flavorless mass with almost zero free liquid. The noodles entirely absorbed the soup and diluted the flavor to absolutely zero. Heart breaking.

[MissDatherinePierce]

A little tip to make it last longer when you indeed add noodles: Cook the noddles separately and store them separate until you want a bowl of soup. It makes the broth last longer before spoiling and it tastes the same.

[supleted]

This is one of the rare cooking videos without a thousand ingredients. Very easy to memorize and repeat.

[grantmerrill]

The "baby, you got a stew going" bit is always appreciated.

[MelGibsonSafari]

In Poland where I live, this is almost every-week soup for most families. It is called "rosół".
We usually eat it with a fine egg noodles or filini pasta, but I heard that some people from the east part of the country like to use potatoes instead. We do not put a zucchini in it, tho.

Great tip: prepare it on Friday, and on Sunday add a lot of tomato paste, and boom! You have another polish soup called "pomidorowa" (tomato soup). It can be also used as a base for yet another polish soup - "krupnik". Instead of pasta, just add some potatoes, pearl barley and a bit of curcuma. Super tasty!
Another tip: Try to burn your onion with a blowtorch, or your gas stove to add a little bit more flavour. You don't need to be careful with the fire - you'll be surprised how long you need to keep it into flame to ruin it! A bit of old spice berries and bay leaf definitely will help, too!

Smacznego!

[thattacoguy]

Adam's soup videos can always be summed up with "just toss some stuff in a pot and boil it" and it always gives me a craving.

[EdwardReynolds]

As a half assed experienced home cook, really appreciate the fast forward camera work.

[sonatine]

My favourite chicken soup is from a old German recipe that my mum always uses:
- cooking one big free-range chicken with bay-leaves, black pepper corns, sea-salt, garlic, a few mild chillies and rosemary in water
- after cooking it, pull the chicken out and bone it in nice chunks / get the herbs out of the broth
- sautéeing well chopped leek, celery, carrots and peas in some oil
- afterwards put the boned chicken chunks and the sautéed stuff in the broth and heat it up again for 10 minutes and taste it with salt and black pepper
- i personally always add some of the "Madras Curry Mix" from the herbstore of my hometown (it contains: turmeric, coriander, fenugreek seed, ginger, caraway seeds, chillies, pimento, nutmeg, cardamom and cloves)
- another good thing is to add some oldschool alphabet soup noodles, they fit perfectly

[sebastianhelgeson]

As a college student who tries making all of his food on weekends and reheats throughout the week, this recipe is perfect! I love when you make leftover friendly dishes.

[apmoy]

In Greece, we take an egg yolk (not the white), we whisk it with the juice from a lemon, we slowly pour some broth in the mixture (so as to avoid cooking the egg and making an omelette) and we add it a minute before removing the pot from heat (for egg safety purposes), and voila, a silky, slightly tangy, delicious soup

[ploefff]

I love how you make cooking feel accessible to beginners.
When you are used to cooking there's a lot of things you just know but would never think to put in a recipe. Things like noodles swell or that a pinch of salt means gripping the salt with 3 fingers instead of 2. The amount is different enough for the beginner cook to notice something is wrong causing frustration because they followed the recipe but it doesn't taste like it's supposed to.

[RohanBarnard]

Just made this. Amazed at how well the egg trick worked and added fresh ginger. Unbelievable flavour.

[getzome]

I already know how to make stock, but I love the little gems of wisdom/laziness/efficiency. Like rinsing and putting the whole bag in the pot. It's obvious once you see it, no sense making your sink all chicken juicy. Experience is the core of cooking.

[theawesomebeing]

I'm really loving these cheap, high-volume, plentiful leftovers recipes (like the chili video from a little bit ago). Very useful for a young person who can't spend too much time or money on food. I'd love to see a similar take on curry!

[ThePoltergust]

Protip: I've discovered lately that if you have a blender, immersion works great, the spent vegetables you would otherwise pull out of a stock and just chuck can blend down _very_ smooth. I like to stick them in a yogurt container, puree them, keep them in the fridge and then add them to bowls of noodles- they retain a bunch of the stock flavor, too. Really good.

[oswillharlow]

Genuinely appreciate Adam posting content based on the items you're definitely likely to have at home. Similar to the chilli video just recently. Aside from a few things you may not have stocked up like the chicken, it's relatively cheap to access and creates dozens of portions of food, so the purchase it worth it either way.

[destroyerofworlds]

This is the exact kind of cooking videos I've always been looking for: A recipe I can get all the ingredients for and not complicated to prepare (+ using up every part of the ingredients for perhaps more dishes). This is a great video 👍

[sarahcatlin]

I made this for my dad right after he came out of hospital, and it cheered him up to no end. Even though he's more used to the 'Jewish Penicillin' style of chicken soup, he said it was the best chicken soup he'd had, and that it helped him feel a little bit better. Thanks Adam!