Recipes : Chicken Soup : Food Network

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Chicken Soup
Recipe courtesy Nigella Lawson

Ingredients
2 small or 1 large boiling or roasting chicken
1 unpeeled onion, halved
1 rib celery
2 carrots, peeled and chunked
A few stalks parsley
A few peppercorns
2 bay leaves
1 tablespoon salt

Directions
1 recipe Matzo Balls, recipe follows

Put all the ingredients, except the matzo balls, in a large stockpot, cover
abundantly with water, and bring to a boil. Skim to remove all the gray scum that
will float to the surface, then let cook at a simmer for about 3 hours. Just keep
tasting: when the broth tastes golden and chickeny, it's ready. Remove the chicken
and, if you like, leave the soup to get cold to you can remove any fat that
collects on the surface. That way you can accrue some schmaltz, too.

Reheat the stock, and serve it as a plain soup, or add a few carrot sticks - from
about 2 carrots, say - and cook in the soup, adding some torn-up pieces of chicken
to warm through at the end. I like to add freshly chopped parsley. (You can also
cook the Matzo Balls in the soup as well while it's heating up again.)

Ingredients

Matzo Balls:

Directions
1 egg
2 tablespoons schmaltz, margarine or butter, melted
3 tablespoons water or soup stock
Scant 1/2 cup medium matzo meal
Pinch salt and a grind of pepper

Whisk the egg in a large-ish bowl, then whisk in the melted schmaltz (or
whatever). Carry on whisking as you add the water or soup stock, the matzo meal
and salt and pepper, and mix together into a rough paste; if it's too stiff to
feel that it might be malleable later, add a little more water. Put in the
refrigerator to chill for 1 hour (or leave overnight if you wish) then dip out

small lumps of paste and roll them into walnut-sized balls between the palms of
your hands. Cook the dumplings in boiling, salted water and simmer for about 40
minutes (you can just cook them directly in the soup, but I'll do anything to
preserve its unstarchy clearness). They are cooked when they rise to the surface.
Add to the soup, and ladle out generously into waiting bowls.

Yield: makes about 20