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Chicken soup made with stock cubes is a perfectly reasonable thing to eat on a Tuesday. Chicken soup made from an actual chicken is a different dish entirely, and it costs less — a whole size 16 bird gives you the broth, the meat for the soup, and enough left over for sandwiches.
The catch is that it takes two hours, most of it unattended.
Serves 6.
The broth is the dish
Everything else here is just vegetables in liquid. If the broth is good, the soup is good, and there are only two things you need to get right.
Start in cold water. Putting the chicken into cold water and bringing it up slowly draws flavour out into the liquid. Dropping it into boiling water seizes the surface proteins and seals a good deal of that flavour inside the bird, which is what you want for poaching a chicken breast and precisely not what you want here.
Never let it boil. This is the important one. A hard boil emulsifies fat and agitated protein into the liquid and turns the broth permanently cloudy and slightly greasy — no amount of straining recovers it. You want the barest movement on the surface, an occasional bubble breaking. If you can hear it, it’s too hot.
Skim the scum in the first ten minutes
As it comes up to temperature a grey-brown foam rises. That’s coagulated protein and it’s where most of the murk comes from. Skim it off with a spoon over the first ten minutes and the finished broth will be noticeably clearer and cleaner-tasting.
After that first ten minutes it stops appearing and you can leave it alone.
Don’t put the vegetables in at the start
Two hours reduces a carrot to nothing. It gives up its flavour to the broth in the first thirty minutes and then just disintegrates, which is why long-simmered soups often have vegetables you can’t identify.
Simmer the chicken with aromatics — onion, a carrot, celery, bay, peppercorns — for the full two hours, then strain them all out and discard them. Their job is done. The vegetables you actually eat go in fresh for the last fifteen minutes, so they still have shape and bite.
Noodles and rice go in separately
Starch added to a pot of soup keeps absorbing liquid, so what was soup at dinner is a solid mass by morning. Cook noodles or rice separately and put them in the bowl, then ladle the soup over.
If you’re serving the whole pot at once and there’ll be no leftovers, cook them in the soup by all means — it’s better that way, since they pick up the flavour.
Frequently asked questions
Why is my chicken soup cloudy?
It boiled. A hard boil emulsifies fat and protein into the liquid and there’s no way back from it. Keep the surface barely moving for the whole two hours, and skim the foam in the first ten minutes.
Should I start with cold or hot water?
Cold, brought up slowly. That draws flavour out of the chicken into the broth. Starting in boiling water seals the surface and keeps the flavour in the meat instead.
Can I use chicken thighs instead of a whole chicken?
Yes — about 1 kg of bone-in thighs, simmered for an hour. Bone-in is essential either way; the bones and connective tissue are what give the broth body. Boneless breast makes a thin, characterless broth.
How long does homemade chicken soup keep?
Four days in the fridge, or three months frozen. Freeze it without the noodles.
Why does my soup taste bland?
Almost always under-seasoned. Three litres of liquid needs a surprising amount of salt, and it should be added at the end, after reduction, not at the start.
Do I have to skim the fat?
Not entirely — a little fat carries flavour. Skim the heavy surface layer. The easiest method is to refrigerate the broth overnight and lift the solid fat off in one piece.
Can I make it in a slow cooker?
Yes, and the gentle heat suits it. Whole chicken and aromatics on low for 6 hours. It’s almost impossible to accidentally boil, which solves the main problem.
What do I do with the rest of the chicken?
Sandwiches, a pie, or a salad. Half a bird’s worth of poached chicken is the second half of the value here.
Variations
- Chicken and vegetable — add diced potato and kūmara with the other vegetables.
- Chicken noodle — egg noodles in the bowl, and a squeeze of lemon at the end.
- Asian-style — ginger, star anise and a stick of cinnamon in the broth; finish with spring onion, coriander and a dash of fish sauce.
- Creamy — stir 1/2 cup of cream into the finished soup off the heat.
- Chicken and corn — a tin of creamed corn stirred in at the end, which is the very Kiwi version.
| Prep Time | 20 minutes |
| Cook Time | 2 hours |
| Servings |
servings
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- 1 whole chicken about 1.6 kg
- 1 onion halved, skin on
- 1 carrot halved
- 2 sticks celery halved
- 3 bay leaves
- 10 whole peppercorns
- a few parsley stalks
- 3 litres cold water
- 2 carrots sliced
- 2 sticks celery sliced
- 1 leek sliced
- 2 cloves garlic crushed
- 2 Tbsp chopped parsley
- salt and freshly ground black pepper
- cooked egg noodles or rice to serve
Ingredients
Broth
Soup
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- Sit the whole chicken in a large stockpot with the halved onion, carrot, celery, bay leaves, peppercorns and parsley stalks. Cover with the cold water.
- Bring slowly up to temperature over a medium heat. As foam rises to the surface in the first 10 minutes, skim it off with a spoon and discard.
- As soon as the first bubbles appear, turn the heat right down. **The broth must never boil** — you want the surface barely moving. Simmer very gently, uncovered, for 1 1/2 hours.
- Lift the chicken out onto a board and leave until cool enough to handle. Strain the broth through a sieve into a clean pot and discard all the aromatics.
- Pull the meat off the chicken, discarding skin and bones, and shred it roughly. You'll get about 500 g; use half in the soup and keep the rest for sandwiches.
- Skim any fat from the surface of the strained broth, or refrigerate it and lift the set fat off if you have time.
- Bring the broth back to a gentle simmer. Add the sliced carrot, celery, leek and garlic and cook for 15 minutes until just tender.
- Return the shredded chicken to warm through for 2 minutes. Season generously — a long broth needs more salt than you expect.
- Stir through the parsley and ladle over cooked noodles or rice in the bowls.