This is part three of a series on chicken soup. Read part one here, and part two here.
No one is going to try to convince you that your bubbie didn’t teach you the best recipe for chicken soup, especially me. But if you are looking for a bit of help or for something a little different, there are plenty of suggestions from other people’s bubbies on the web.
If you’re not fortunate enough to have your own bubbie to share her secrets with you, don’t fret. Bubbe Bayla is available. Her full name is Bayla Sher, and she and her grandson Avrom Honig put together a delightful series of videos that you can watch online for free – and glean her secrets. There are videos about borscht, blintzes, tzimmes and more. But the real star of the show is chicken soup, which merits three episodes. Unfortunately Bubbe Bayla passed away in 2014; thankfully her videos live on.
For more video variations, check out Lauren Groveman’s kitchen and technique as well as this one that throws in instructions for matzah balls.
The Jewish-Food Chicken Soup Archives (isn’t it great to know that such a website exists?) boasts about two dozen recipes including Harsha’s Spicy, Farmhouse and Sickbed. The Jerusalem Post has several recipes including a “zingy” variation that doesn’t spare the garlic (about 15 cloves.) Meanwhile, University of Utah Hillel offers a vegetarian “chicken soup” recipe that doesn’t call for any chickens at all.
Do you have memories of watching your bubbie cooking with a pressure cooker while you waited (and hoped!) for that lid to blast off? Now you can relive those memories as you cook up your own chicken soup with a pressure cooker – in under an hour. Watch again as a steam of vapour escapes that little nozzle and your kitchen fills with heavenly smells. Anthea Gerrie desmystifies the cookers while Jamie Geller provides the recipe.
Many people prepare a Shabbat cholent on Friday and let it stew overnight so that they can enjoy a warm meal on Saturday afternoon. For something different, why not try a hot chicken soup on Shabbat afternoon? Cooks.com has several recipes for soups that you let stew for several hours. If you do plan to leave your soup in a crockpot on Shabbat, you may want to experiment during the week to perfect how much water to use.
I’m not sure if Zaide was ever allowed around the stove – I sure didn’t find many (or any) traditionally recipes from him. But I did find the blog, “Why Don’t More Jewish Men Cook?” It’s “designed to teach Jewish men, especially frum (observant) ones, that cooking and housework is not women’s work; it’s everyone’s work.” The site is sprinkled with recipes, many of which begin with the word “Easy” as in “Easy Meatloaf” and “Easy Broccoli.” The site’s chicken soup recipe promises to be both delectable and not too difficult to make.
No one had to convince Jerry Greenberg that Jewish men CAN cook. Greenberg was a finalist in the first national Chicken Soup Challenge. The National Jewish Outreach Program set out on the daring and daunting journey: to find the best chicken soup in America. Five hundred amateur cooks sent their recipes to Jeffrey Nathan, executive chef and owner of the acclaimed kosher restaurant Abigael’s in New York. Nathan chose five finalists to compete in the four-hour cook-off.
The winner? Rosely Himmelstein with her somewhat traditional soup (carrot, onion, celery, leek, parsnip, sweet potato, rutabaga and dill). Greenberg (the only male in the final five) threw tradition to the wind with his Jamaican-inspired soup: yucca root, plantain, crimini and coconut milk. (Speaking of which, my next column: chicken soup like Bubbe NEVER used to make.)
Although we tend to believe that nothing can compare with a bubbie’s (or a mother-in-law’s) chicken soup, things were a bit different for Claudia Spevak. She remembers the time – actually, the ONLY time in 35 years – that her mother-in-law invited them over for a home-cooked meal. “She served chicken soup. The only problem is that she neglected to remove the onion skins. I practically choked to death on one of them. After that, I didn’t feel upset that I had missed all those years of her ‘delicious cooking.’”
Spevak did find an upside, though. “The advantage to all of this is that when your husband has a mother who cooked like this, he thinks everything you make is wonderful.”
