Cooking Tip: Degreasing Chicken Stock

19 01 2011

I used to buy canned chicken broth with nary a thought. Then a friend made some black bean soup with homemade stock and I realized how much better my own soups would be if I chucked the cans. (I also became increasingly concerned about the chemicals in the lining of the cans, but that’s another story.) So for a few years now I’ve been freezing my own stock to use when I want to make soup.

But over the holidays I used up my stash of frozen stock, so last week when I made chicken soup I had to start from scratch. What I’d forgotten, however, was the little problem of de-greasing it. The best way to do this is to make it one day and let it cool overnight in the fridge. The fat will congeal on the top in a yellowish, Crisco-like layer (yummy, I know). Then it can be quickly and easily lifted off for a soup that tastes better and is healthier for your heart.

What to do if you run out of time and don’t have hours to let the soup cool in the fridge? As my kids and I learned last week, a snow drift works fine, too. We put the stock pot (uncovered) in the snow on our patio, moving its position as the snow around it melted. In about 30 minutes, the fat had risen and could be skimmed off the top!


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Categories : In Winter, Kids in the Kitchen, Recipes, Uncategorized

Zucchini and Green Bean Soup

13 06 2010

It’s good to know I’m not the only one who likes soup, even in summer. I wasn’t sure if readers would be interested in soup recipes, but earlier this week I shared a recipe for asparagus soup and lots of people commented on it.

One reader asked if it would work with green beans. I’d never tried it before, but that same day a recipe appeared in the Denver Post for Zucchini and Green Bean Soup. In addition to the namesake vegetables, the soup has edamame and pesto for more protein and flavor.

At first pesto might seem like an odd addition, but basil is a perfect match for sauteed zucchini so adding it to soup isn’t such a stretch. I freeze pesto in cubes when I make it in bulk in August, then add it to minestrone in winter and pea soup in summer. In fact, I just made the pea soup last night for a friend and used up nearly the last of last season’s pesto! Now if only my baby basil plants outside would start to grow.


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Categories : In Summer, Recipes, Uncategorized

Kids in the Kitchen: Soup

4 02 2010

The more kids help in the kitchen, the more likely they are to eat well. Vegetables won’t seem so weird once they’ve been selected, scrubbed and nibbled. Flavors won’t seem so foreign if they’ve been sampled far from the high-stakes dinner table. When kids are allowed to help, meals stop being cause for suspicion and turn into an object of pride. (As in, “Look what I made, Mommy!”)

Still, it’s hard to let kids help. Flour ends up on the floor. Eggshells wind up in the batter. When we do let them sit on the counter, we often give them bit parts like dumping in the sugar. But last night, my kids and I reversed roles. They were in charge and I helped. My five-year-old declared the dinner that followed to be “the best dinner ever, by a million, trillion, billion!”

What was the object of such raves? Nothing other than — get this — stone soup.

If you’re a teacher, librarian or parent of young kids, you might know Marcia Brown’s Stone Soup about three soldiers and the war-weary French peasants who are reluctant to share their food. One by one, the villagers hide their goods and then lie to the hungry soldiers, telling them they have nothing to eat. So the soldiers offer to make stone soup, and command a kettle to be filled with water and a few stones. If only there were some carrots, they say, then this good soup would be even better. Mysteriously, one villager finds a few carrots. Then another finds cabbage, then potatoes, beef and barley, until the soup is fit for a king. Soldiers and villagers end up feasting together well into the night, a classic case of generosity, of something from nothing.

My son loves this story. So when he discovered a turnip and two carrots we’d overlooked in our tiny garden, he excitedly asked if we could make stone soup. Why not? The littlest one scrubbed potatoes. The middle one cut them with a butter knife. The oldest grabbed the peeler and the sharper knife.


My five-year-old, hard at work scrubbing the stone.

The pot eventually got so full it was more like thick stew than soup, but the kids didn’t notice. They were too proud of their new scrubbing, peeling and chopping skills to care that the potatoes were overcooked, that the broth was under salted. I didn’t care, either. All I saw were their huge smiles and their pride at being the Big Kids Who Cooked Dinner for Mommy.

Stone Soup

First, find a smooth stone and wash it well. We let ours boil for 15 minutes, too, just to make sure it was clean. Put at least 32 ounces of chicken broth in a saucepan, and add the stone. Then, depending on their age, let your children wash, peel and cut a variety of vegetables and add them to the pot. An onion, carrots and potatoes make a good base. The rest is up to you: turnips, cabbage, spinach, zucchini, green beans, whatever you have. Cook until tender, season to taste, and add parmesan cheese at the table for extra flavor. You can make this project even more fun by letting kids choose their own Stone Soup vegetables at the grocery store.


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Split Pea Soup with Bacon

23 12 2009

With Christmas just a few days away, I’m a cook’s version of Jekyll and Hyde. Either I’m in the kitchen for long periods of time or I’m not in the kitchen at all. No middle ground this time of year.

When you’d rather be doing something else — Nutcracker, last-minute shopping, whatever — but don’t want to keep eating out, try this easy Split Pea Soup. It goes together quickly so you can make it early in the day and then refrigerate it, pulling it out hours later when you need it. Note that split pea soup usually calls for ham bone. I like to use nitrite- and nitrate-free bacon instead; it’s easier to find, and I can use remaining slices in other go-to recipes like frittatas. I also cook the carrots separately and add them back in before serving so I can puree the soup without losing all the bright flecks of color.

Split Pea Soup with Bacon
6-8 bacon slices, chopped or cut into small pieces with kitchen shears
2 large carrots, small diced
2 onions, chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
7 cups low-salt chicken broth or water
2 1/2 cups green split peas, rinsed
3 bay leaves

Cook bacon in a large pot. While it’s cooking, boil carrots in a small pot of water until done. Drain and set carrots aside. When bacon is crisp, add onions and garlic and sauté about 7 minutes. Add broth, peas, and bay leaves and bring soup to boil. Reduce heat and simmer until the peas are tender, stirring occasionally, about 1 hour. Remove bay leaves and puree soup to desired texture, either with an immersion blender or by putting a portion of the soup in a food processor or blender. Add in diced carrots and season to taste with salt and pepper. As soup cools, it will thicken so add more broth or water as necessary.


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Italian Sausage Soup with Tortellini

15 11 2009

kids clean carrots My kitchen burn-out has finally ended. Maybe it’s the snowy day that just begged for soup. Maybe it’s the fact that we’ve eaten up all the party leftovers. Maybe cooking is too much of a creative outlet for me to forsake it for too long. Whatever the reason, today was the day that I (finally!) reached for my wooden cutting board and favorite chef’s knife.

As if to prove how little cooking I’ve done this week, I had to start with a quick inventory of my produce bin. Carrots. Onions. Garlic. Potatoes. Acorn squash. Pretty much the entire contents of last week’s CSA delivery. I grabbed the first three ingredients and some Italian sausage, and began the soothing process of making a favorite at our house: Italian Sausage Soup with Tortellini.

This recipe came to me from a talented cook and mother of four, so you know it fits my criteria of being 1) healthy and yummy; 2) quick; and 3) kid-friendly. Sometimes I make it as written, with organic beef broth and red wine. Sometimes I make it with homemade chicken stock and white wine. Since I have red wine leftover from the party, today I made the former, although I have to say I’m partial to the chicken stock/white wine version, probably because the homemade chicken stock adds that sumptuous layer of flavor.

Besides being a one-pot meal, this soup is fantastic because it’s so quick to make. You start by browning the sausage, and by the time it’s done, you’ve chopped the onion, garlic, carrots and zucchini. Everything else gets simmered together, filling the house with warm, hearty smells. My kids joined in the fun (four-year-old on the left, scrubbing carrots; seven-year-old at right, peeling them), happy to be part of the action and sensing, perhaps, that the kitchen is the foundation of our family, and family meals are the foundation of our home.

Italian Sausage Soup with Tortellini

1 lb Italian sausage, not in casing
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, sliced
4 cups chicken stock (or organic beef broth)
1 cup water
3/4 cup white wine (or red, if using beef broth)
14 oz can diced organic tomatoes*
1 1/2 cups sliced carrots
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 1/2 cups sliced zucchini or squash
14 oz cooked chickpeas
8 oz cheese tortellini
3 T chopped parsley

Brown sausage in a large dutch oven over medium heat. (Or use sausage in a casing and slice in half lengthwise, then in slices when cooked through). Reserving 1 T of fat in pan, remove sausage and drain on paper towels. Cook onions and garlic until tender. Add sausage, broth, water, wine, tomatoes, carrots, basil and oregano. Let boil, then simmer 15 minutes. Add zucchini and chickpeas simmer until vegetables are cooked. In a separate pot, cook tortellini and add it to the soup just before serving so the noodles don’t get mushy. Top with parsley and parmesan cheese when serving.

*As I’ve recently written, there’s concern over BPA levels in the lining of some canned foods such as tomatoes. Look for ones in glass jars or Pomi brand in cartons.

** Okay, it’s not technically a one-pot meal since I cooked the tortellini separately. When I’m so pressed for time that I don’t want even one more pot to wash, I’ve cooked the tortellini in the soup (as specified in the original recipe), but I find that cooking them separately is worth it, especially if I’m cooking the soup ahead.


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Categories : In Autumn, Kids in the Kitchen, Recipes, Uncategorized

Cupboard sans Carottes

16 01 2009

monroe carrots

monroe carrots

After years of reading “Old Mother Hubbard” (“and when she came there/the cupboard was bare/and so the poor dog had none”), I struck an emotional connection to the rhyme yesterday that blew the dust off those words.

The a-ha moment came while making chicken soup, a staple at my house given my desire to spend more time rolling balls for  snowmen and less time cooking. So there I am, making chicken soup, when I open the crisper to find No.Carrots. Sure, chicken soup can be made sans carottes, but it ends up reminding me of one of those monochrome meals from college with cheesy broccoli and tater tots sidled up next to saucy noodles.

How could my cupboard be bare? Not bare, exactly, but bare enough that it lacked the mirepoix essentials? At one point in my life, when I lived on the Upper East side, I picked up groceries every day. A few tomatoes, a banana, whatever I needed from a street vendor on the walk home from the subway. Over the years my trips have dwindled in inverse proportion to my family size. Now there are five of us and I shop once a week, mostly for milk, yogurt and whatever protein I’ll build our menus around. The veggies come from my farm share, which drops from weekly to bi-monthly in the winter. Given the holiday, there hadn’t been a goodie bag in a month, and with a house full of company we’d long ago blown through it. Onions? Gone. Spaghetti squash? Gone. Potatoes? Ditto. All that remained were two heads of garlic, but they weren’t going to be a satisfying stand-in for my missing carrots.

But today was CSA pick-up day and thankfully, I’m back in business. One-and-a-half pounds of freshly scrubbed carrots—cleaned under the admiring eye of my 7-year-old (“Wow, look at all that dirt!”)—are now sitting in my vegetable drawer, just waiting for the next batch of chicken soup. This time with carrots.

Click here for my recipe for Chicken Soup


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Chicken Soup

16 01 2009

Rinse 3-4 pounds chicken (bone-in breasts, thighs and drumsticks are a good combo) and put in stockpot with water to cover. Add a quartered onion, 3 carrots, 4 celery stalks (leaves and all), a bay leaf and a teaspoon of dried thyme. Let boil then turn down and simmer until chicken is done, skimming foam as it develops. Remove chicken from the pot and take off the meat, adding the bones back in for flavor. Let simmer, partially covered, for up to five hours, then strain. In a separate pot cook 4 or 5 extra carrots and add them to the finished soup along with a few good handfuls of shredded chicken, plus spinach or whatever leafy greans are lying around. Salt and pepper to taste. If you want noodles, cook them separately and add them in just before eating so they don’t get mushy.


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