… Reliably Good, Easily Made “From Scratch”
(c) 2019, Davd
Chicken soup is famous as a comfort food — and a very healthy one. It belongs in every kitchen’s repertoire for that reason. As a man who likes robust rather than delicate flavours, I find that the dark meat of the chicken (found in the legs and back) makes a richer-flavoured soup than the white [poitrine1] meat. Dark meat chicken soup is my kind of comfort food — hearty.
Chicken, more generally, belongs in the repertoire of any man who cooks most of his meals, either alone or in teamwork. This winter in Western Canada, pork loin has been available at less than two dollars per pound, boneless. Beef is expensive by comparison, and fish, even more so. Chicken this winter, costs more than pork “on specials”, but much less than beef or fish: Unless you want to alternate mainly between pork and meatless high protein foods like beans, lentils2, and peas — chicken belongs in your repertoire.
Recently, whole chicken thighs [with bone, without back] were sold for about a dollar and a half per pound. $3.30/kg]. Last summer, whole frozen chicken legs [back attached] were sold for a dollar per pound [$2.20/kg]. At those prices, dark chicken meat is less expensive than “boneless white” at its recent special price [slightly above $5.50/kg]: The dark meat prices now offer you more chicken per dollar, even allowing for the bones3.
About five years ago, i published a technique for chicken cacciatore, which suits those thighs and whole legs better than it would work with poitrine [white meat]. This stew will taste noticeably different than cacciatore, because it does not use tomatoes (and if they are available, i recommend the stew include bean sprouts, which i would not recommend for cacciatore.) With these two techniques available, you can cook dark chicken meat more often without getting bored [and without frying or baking it, which is a third distinct way to enjoy the brown pieces of chicken].
I’ll describe the stew cooking technique using the largest cooking pot in a small kitchen. It can definitely be cooked up in larger amounts if you have larger pots and more than one man eating.
My largest pot just now is heavy-bottomed stainless steel, 8″ in diameter and 4½” tall; it holds between 3 and 4 litres (perhaps 4 US quarts?) brim full. I can put three thigh pieces in the bottom of it, skin side down, with a little room to spare. I turn the power on under the pan, fairly low, put the meat in, put the lid on, and let the heat toughen the skin while browning it slightly and drawing out some fat.
Meanwhile, I chop some onion—half a medium onion, you could perhaps get away with using less—and when there is fat in the bottom of the pot4, add that onion. While it is browning, i chop half a large carrot or all of a small one, into pieces about 1 cm [3/8″] on a side. They go into the pot with a quart or litre of water (and I substitute vegetable stock for as much of that water as i have stock, handy). Turning the heat up fairly high, I next cut up about as much cabbage as I did carrot, quite small; and a few mushrooms if i have some handy5. These go in when they are cut up, by which time the water should be boiling or getting near. Sage, celery, liveche, pepper and oregano are good herbs to use for seasoning; and some brine from a bottle of green olives is also good — but don’t salt without first tasting, if you use much of that.
Turn down the power, and let the chicken and vegetables boil gently 10-15 minutes before adding a quarter as much rice or pasta, as the volume of water. (With mushrooms, I prefer pasta.) Monitor the cooking, turning down the power when it returns to boiling after adding the pasta …
… and when the pasta is done to your liking, turn off the power, and add 1 — 3 handfuls of beansprouts. They do not need to boil; hot nearly boiling water will cook them enough.
Take out two of the chicken thigh pieces6 to use as cooked chicken in other meals7. They have made the stock in the stew, rich-flavoured. What you have in the pot, is a hearty, tasty chicken stew with enough meat, pasta, and bean sprouts to give you ample protein; and enough vegetables that while you’re welcome to eat more vegetables besides, you needn’t.
The stew will make one big meal or two small ones, for one man. It can be refrigerated in the pot where it cooked, if you choose to have two meals, or if the fridge is crowded it can go in a smaller container. It re-heats as good as it was the first time… and if you have bigger pots, you can scale up the technique… as you can also adjust the pasta, onion, carrots, and cabbage to your taste.
Notes:
1. The English word, “breast” is much more often used to refer to human mammary bulges than to chest muscle meat from birds; while poitrine means only the “white” bird meat. (The French word I have read for human mammary bulges is Tetons, which makes the name of a mountain range, south of here in the USA, somewhat comical.)
2. I usually cook lentils with curry powder and onion; and if i have vegetable stock handy, heat that for soaking the dry lentils. Perhaps later this year i’ll post that technique; experienced cooks can probably approximate it from this footnote.
3. The past few winters, my default chicken purchase has been boneless, skinless chicken poitrine, frozen, for about $2 per pound [$4.40 /kg] on special. It’s meaty, very low in fat, and according to Dr. K, my favourite physician around here, more digestible than beef or pork. I’m waiting to see if the poitrine price comes back down to where it was the past few years, at least be convinced it won’t go up further, before I write about cooking it.
4. If there is moisture with the fat, that won’t hurt; ideally, you’ll figure out how to time the heating to brown that skin slightly and get out only fat, in which case the onion will also brown slightly.
5. Usually, I have frozen, dried, and salted wild mushrooms from the autumn. This year I sometimes buy marked down mushrooms, cook them fairly slowly in a frying pan with oil or margarine and a little onion and oregano, and freeze them; so this stew is developed using grocery store Agaricus.
6. They can be taken out when the pasta is added, or perhaps ideally, when the pasta is cooked but before adding the sprouts. That extra boiling time will assure the chicken meat is fully cooked… though 15 minutes ought to be plenty, chickens, and therefore thigh pieces, vary in size.
7. It is quite possible to make a second soup from one of the other pieces: For instance, I boiled a handful of [chicken thigh] bones i had put in the feezer, with vegetable scraps being saved for stock, gently for 5-10 minutes; then [when the scraps and bones had been removed] added to that boiling water
‣ Carrot and cabbage as above; no mushrooms,
‣ ≈ 2 rounded teaspoons of Knorr chicken/broth powder,
‣ and cooked rice.
Since the meat was already cooked, i let the pot boil only long enough to cook the carrot. Added beansprouts as before; it made a good soup, not as rich, but worthy of the name “chicken soup.”
This second soup technique can be precautionary, if the saved piece of meat might have been a day too long in the ‘fridge. My guess is that in summer, most saved meat will be eaten cold, and in winter, it will often be made into a second, perhaps third soup… by men cooking for one.
