Whenever I roast a whole chicken or turkey, I store the carcass in my deep freeze to use for soup. Sometime down the line when I’m in a soup-y sort of mood I take it out and simmer it in water for a couple of hours. I add spices and occasionally veggies and while it cooks, it smells really lovely. It’s all chicken soup and comfort in my kitchen, just as soup should be. Like a warm hug in a stock pot.
Once I have my broth done I strain it and pick the remaining meat off the bones. Then I saute my soup veggies in some butter, add the broth and the meat, and then just before it’s all done I add noodles and maybe some frozen peas. I’ve gotten good at figuring out how many noodles to add so that the soup isn’t too noodle-y. I get a good mix of all the ingredients and my soup looks just as soup should.
Here’s my problem, though. As lovely as the soup looks, and as lovely as it smells, it just doesn’t taste like much. There isn’t much flavour in it, and I don’t know why. I’ve searched online and read recipe after recipe, and I follow the directions. I suspect that maybe I’m trained to expect rather a lot of salt in my soup or something like that. I’m not sure. The soup is filling, and it’s OK, but I can’t get over the blandness.
Here’s the thing, though. My kids and my husband love my bland soup. My 5-year-old Hannah becomes gleeful when I make it. When I serve her soup other than my homemade chicken noodle, she doesn’t like it. She prefers my soup above all others, and it is her favourite thing that I make. Which is OK with me, because it’s healthy and economical and really not that hard to make.
I think that there’s a lesson in my soup. I spend so much time trying to make everything that I do, and everything that I am, good. I overthink and analyze and read how-to books and comb the internet. I tweak and tweak, and yet somehow it feels as if it’s never quite right. An inner voice tells me that there is something lacking.
And yet, all of this negativity, all of this insufficiency, is self-imposed. The people who matter most, my husband and children, love me just as I am. They think I am the very best soup I could be. They prefer me above all other soups in the whole wide world. There is no lack in their eyes.
Lunch may be lacking in salt around here, but it’s chock full of epiphanies. Would you like a bowl?
I always add a base of onion, celery and carrot to the carcass as I am making stock. As well I add a ton of poultry seasoning, thyrme and pepper…and good pinch of salt…my grandma made me do it! When I made my chicken noodle soup though, I always use broad egg noodles and I cook them seperately and then add individual amounts to each bowl severd and then laddel my actual soup on top. No noodles get overly soggy this way allowing us to customize our soup to noodle ratio to our own liking.
Even when I don’t have a carcass and I want fast soup I grab a two tetra packs of organic stock, a whole cooked chicken from the deli section of the grocery store and go home and put the two together an voila, instant chicken noodle soup. In our house, this soup if always accompanied by a sandwhich of some sort. Ususally tuna melts or turkey pannini. Okay, it is only 7:31 am here and now I am hungry, thanks Amber.
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After as lot of fooling around with carcasses and water, I’ve found that roasting deepens the poultry flavor. I put all the bones and maybe a quartered onion and sometimes a carrot or two into a roasting pan and re-roast the bones until they’re good and brown – maybe half an hour in a hot oven. Then I put the browned bones into the stock pot, and deglaze the roasting pan into the pot also. I’ve also found that a very low heat, barely simmering, for at least 2 hours, brings out more flavor. And I’m with Heather – cook the noodles separately!
Oh I’ll have to try this!
Tanya’s last post … Random
ditto
pomomama aka ebbandflo’s last post … friday forte- holy crap
It looks delicious! I love soup, the wonderful aroma while making it and the wholesomeness of making it myself. I have the same issue with chicken soup, it is often bland unless I add soup mix or soup stock (more salt) to the mixture. I think the fact that you want to improve it is what soup making is all about. It’s why I love making soup, it’s always different and the more you do it, the better you get at it. I’m still trying to perfect my beef stew. As much as you wouldn’t want to change what your family loves, adding a few cloves of garlic, some celery, bay leaves and/or squash has helped flavour my chicken soups.
Tanya’s last post … Random
I think what you’re missing isn’t salt, but fresh herbs. I add different ones depending on my mood: thyme, sage, even basil, when I’m going for an Italian chicken soup. I am also pretty heavy on the garlic, no matter what I’m cooking. I hardly even notice the missing salt.
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mmmmm…. garlic….
what a lovely post!
Isn’t it the most wonderful thing when your family prefers your version of something above all others? Doesn’t it just feel like maybe there are a few perks to cooking at home beyond frugality (and healthy choices)?
What a nice compliment to you.
*pol’s last post … too darn hot
oh the power of a good soup. You seem to have the recipe just right for your family if they like it that way!
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YUM and I just had lunch, I could eat a bowl of your soup too!
My first thought maybe add some bacon to the mix, but then I thought, maybe you don’t like bacon? What about bits of ham? I always think those are really salty meats and might be better than adding actual salt.
I’m curious, how does Jacob handle the soup?
I’m dealing with a picky eater and haven’t tried soup yet because he won’t eat the ingredients seperately (besides the peas). But maybe putting them together makes a difference?
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A few months ago I read an article on Canadian processed food that stated that we have more salt in our processed food that pretty much any other country including the US. I think we’ve been programmed to have extra flavour in everything. I know I find many things too bland. I’m hoping that as I stop using processed food and cook from scratch more I’ll readjust my tastebuds back to normal.
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One thing that makes a difference when making chicken soup is that you do not use the meat that you boiled up to make the stock in the soup. YOu need to add fresh chicken (otherswise the taste has been boiled out of it). Maybe I mis-read your post. And salt really does help!
But I see we are talking epiphanies here: Maybe your family thinks you are salty enough already
!
That is one sweet epiphany!
Oh, and a bit of red pepper and basil yums up soup a treat. =D
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sounds gorgeous, what a great idea (has never thought about freezing the carcass!) and sounds much more pleasant than my own “dead refridgerator vegetable soup which is all things ugly from the salad drawer plus chopped tomatoes. it’s good you’ve found a meal which your family likes so well (so don’t mess with it …..)
we’ve cut out adding salt to fresh prep so use more herbs now. fresh or the squeezy tube stuff seems good. i also have a secret weapon in the form of a powdered bouillion powder i bully my sister into bringing over from the UK.
my latest easy prep epiphany is to use the beans/veg cooked under the ribs in the slow cooker for vegetarian pies, wraps, lasagne etc – they freeze well and taste yummily meaty.
pomomama aka ebbandflo’s last post … friday forte- holy crap
1) Awwwwww, so sweet!, 2) My soup sucks too, except my kids hate it as much as I do. LOL
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Beautiful and very true!
My soups are bland too, and here’s to lovin it! I spice my bowl up with hot sauce
I find it’s great in most soups. Have a great day!
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I myself like to make homemade soup. A trick I employ is to put just a dash of tamari or fish sauce to taste at the end. Use of these ingredients has to do with Umami (translation is ‘tastiness”). These foods are high in glutamic acid, (which is similar to what makes food with MSG so tasty) as are mushrooms and anchovies. I was once told that even just a dash of good soy sauce in chocolate sauce can make a big difference. I haven’t tried that one, but I believe it. Have to be careful with the quantities of these items, they are rich in flavour but powerful. Have you ever smelled fish sauce? Smells like rotting yuck…but a dash really does make a lot of foods better. Could always add a wee drop to your portion and leave the kids unadulterated.
I have also tried over time to spice up my chicken noodle soup, and, so far, it still disappoints me. I now give the carcass to my chef DIL and she works her magic to produce something far better than mine. I also get some of the results, so it works for me!
I think the post about the twice-boiled chicken may provide the answer to the blandness. I also appreciate all of the other suggestions. Yes, when in doubt, use garlic! However, I do make a chicken barley tomato veg soup that is to die for, using cut up turkey or chicken that I cook in oil. I add marjoram, thyme and sage to it, which is yummy.This is my “go to” soup on a rainy day, although I’m also partial to sweet potato, lentil and barley soup…and, yes, I love all things barley. I have the perfect emergency casserole recipe for a nursing mother, full of barley, cheese, tomato and a bit of green peppr and onion, according to sensitivity. It’s one that all of my grandmother friends now have on tap to speed to their daughters or DIL’s.
And I love your epiphanies about what become family favourites. I’m not allowed to change my sage dressing recipe for turkey although it now bores me to tears. Over the years I have tried side-by-side poultry dressings, only to hear how happy the family is with the “traditional” one. Too funny. I guess that also applies to chocolate chip cookies and my famous ginger cookies, too, which I got from my now departed MIL. All good things seem to pass the test of time. I still make my mother’s delicious potato salad, although, at 93, she has decided that she likes Safeway’s better because “it has smaller pieces.”
Of course I would LOVE some!
What a beautiful post and sweet metaphor. I probably should take the same care when making soup:)
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Wonderfully written and evocative – thanks, Amber. I think perhaps your problem is the noodles. If you cook them separately, and then toss them in, you my get more flavor. Or you could add bouillion, which would add salt and flavor (I have to do this, sometimes). Conversely, you could toss your leftover gravy into the broth, which I often do, It adds depth of flavor.
Good luck!
Trece
I always find I get lots of flavour if I saute chicken breasts in addition to using the carcass meat. I love that your kids love your home cooking no matter what you think!
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“Like a warm hug in a stockpot”…best description ever. And now I want soup.
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I want to make soup like yours! I make a pretty decent beef stew, but next I want to do the noodle thing.
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onion and garlic is the base for anything to taste yummy.
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I used to like the canned stuff better too, but now I prefer mine — a combination of improving my recipe and getting used to less salt.
My tricks: putting half an onion and one chopped carrot in with the bones to make the stock; adding *different* onion, carrot, and chicken in the final version (because the stock ones are all soggy and tasteless); and adding enough salt. I also sometimes reduce the stock a bit (or just use less water in the first place — a watery stock that doesn’t gel just isn’t strong enough for me) and sometimes add some lemon juice. Also, you want to save the pan drippings from roasting a chicken or turkey and put some of those in there. I usually use all my pan drippings in my soup.
Mm, chicken soup… I’d be jealous, but I make it at least once a week myself!
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