Professional culinary experts claim that they can cook any dish from two or three main products at hand.
We will also try to show creative initiative in our kitchen: take a standard set of products for everyday homemade soup and cook something new, except for noodles and classic broth, and thereby expand the range of chicken soups with noodles and potatoes in the family menu.
Chicken soup with noodles and potatoes - the basic technological principles
Let's start with the intricacies of preparing the broth - the most important component of the soup, on which not only the taste but also the benefits of the first dish depend.
To get saturated chicken stock, it is advisable to choose the meat of old chickens, carcasses, slaughtered from the age of one year and above. Usually take a rooster. Her one trick: tastier chicken, grown not in a cage, but one that lived free. Their meat is a little tougher, but for the broth, given the cooking time, it works. If necessary, grind the carcass, grind it and gut it. Dry the wings, cleaned stomach, liver and heart after washing, putting them in a sealed package, and send them to the freezer: from this set, later prepare the soup with giblets. Divide the rest of the carcass so that the meat is boiled faster and send to cook, adding roots and spices after removing the foam and when the meat is almost ready.
There is a second option. If the pulp is needed for cooking other dishes, then separating it from the bones, cook the bone broth, reducing the amount of water accordingly. It will be very good if a habit develops when buying chicken every time to choose a whole carcass, and not separately, fillet or pulp. Bones are always useful, and it is for soups.
Now about cooking the broth: Do not try to cook meat and, especially, bones quickly, including immediately maximum fire. Meat components must languish. This is the main secret of a healthy and tasty broth. In addition, in this cooking mode, the probability of skipping the moment of removal of the foam is very small. If this still happened - do not be discouraged. You can correct the situation in a few simple ways to get a beautiful, transparent broth, but read about it below immediately after the recipes.
If the duration of cooking meat and bones affects the extraction of the broth and its saturation with enzymes and other substances that help improve digestion and prepare the body for taking main dishes and desserts, then adding vegetables and roots to the meat broth not only improves its taste, but also saturates it with vitamins. The latter, as you know, need to be kept in the maximum quantity, and long-term heat treatment impedes this task. Therefore, add the roots and other vegetables at the very last stage, when the meat is almost cooked. Salt the soup broth, too, should be the last thing.
All ingredients are sent to the soup in a strictly defined order: depending on the required duration of their cooking. The meat is boiled first. Then it is either extracted from the broth and subjected to further processing, or, if it has already been cut into portioned portions, the harder and denser ingredients are added to it, then, if necessary, the soup is seasoned with passivated vegetables. Green vegetables and cabbage are thrown into the soup at the final stage of cooking, because they have the most delicate texture and contain the maximum amount of vitamins that must be stored without subjecting them to intense heat treatment. It is allowed to add leafy vegetables to ready-made soups, immediately upon serving.
When choosing pasta for soup, you need to give preference to hard varieties. Depending on the size (thickness) of the vermicelli, the cooking time is from two to five minutes, and it must be borne in mind that after cooking, pasta, remaining in the hot broth, increases in volume, absorbing moisture. Based on this, the desired soup density is selected.
However, to preserve vitamins in the soup, choose soft potatoes with a low starch content: it cooks much faster.
Try to chop harder and denser vegetables finely, and those that are cooked for a short time - larger.
Recipe 1. Chicken Noodle and Potato Soup: Potato Dumplings with Homemade Noodles
List of ingredients:
Chicken meat 0.5 kg
Boiled potatoes 250 g
Eggs 3-4 pcs.
Carrot 120 g
Garlic 20 g
Spices 10 g
Onions 300 g
Flour (premium) 280 g
Chicken bones 800 g
Ginger and parsley (roots) - 40 g each
Water 1.6 L
Cream, oily (for serving)
Greenery
Cooking:
Cook the bone broth by adding peeled whole roots, salt and spices to it. Throw it through a sieve covered with a napkin and discard all unnecessary. Grind the potatoes, chicken flesh and garlic, if necessary adding spices and salt, beat the egg and, having mixed the mass, form dumplings with a spoon. Sift the flour onto the table, salt it lightly, add the rest of the eggs and knead the cool noodle dough. Roll it thinly (no more than 2 mm thick). Roll the dough into a roll and cut into thin strips. Straighten the wheels and let them dry on the table. When rolling, use flour, and when the paw dries, shake it off.
Cook the dumplings and noodles simultaneously in a boiling broth. When serving, season each serving with your favorite greens and hot cream.
Recipe 2. Chicken soup with noodles and potatoes - transparent
Ingredients:
Rooster 2.5 kg
Roots (parsley and celery) - 40 g each
Dill stalks 30 g
Allspice
Fresh lemon zest
Potato 350 g
Onion, white 120 g
Pasta (noodles) 180 g
Parsley, fresh leaves
Ground white pepper
Carrots, whole 150 g
Bay leaf
Water 2.4 L
Salt
Output: 6 servings
Cooking:
For a good broth you need to take a large bird older than a year. Cut the processed carcass of a rooster, without a neck, offal and legs, into pieces so that all the meat fits in a pan and is completely covered with water. Cook on the smallest fire until the meat lags behind the bone. Before boiling, try to remove the foam. When the broth becomes transparent, add a bunch of dill stalks, chopped or chopped roots, peeled, whole carrots, peppercorns, onions and bay leaves. Continue cooking the rooster for fifteen minutes to make the meat flavorful. Put the finished poultry meat on a dish and separate the pulp, chopping it arbitrarily and strain the broth, removing the roots. Return the broth to the stove, add peeled potato bars. When it is half ready, salt and toss the noodles, parsley, spices and prepared meat. Boil and remove from the stove.
Recipe 3. Chicken soup with vermicelli and potatoes, green
Products:
Carrot, red 80 g
Celery Leaves 40 g
Leek 120 g
Spider Web 140 g
Potato 300 g (net)
Fat 50 g
Spices 20 g
Parsley 90 g
Bouillon 1.6 L
Output: 4 servings
Cooking:
Chop the onion and sauté it. Cut the peeled potatoes into thin slices. Cut the roots in the form of noodles, long and thin and add to the passivated onion, bring to softness and transfer to a boiling broth. After boiling, drop the potatoes and cook for twenty minutes; add spices, bay leaves, spiderwebs - let it boil for a couple more minutes, put chopped herbs, cover the pan with a lid and remove from the stove.
Recipe 4. Chicken soup with noodles and potatoes - milk
Product Composition:
Broth 330 ml
Milk 500 ml
Celery 25 g
Potato 100 g
Vermicelli (or stars, bows) 50 g
Cauliflower 90 g
Butter 30 g
Leek 30 g
Carrot 70 g
Spinach 40 g
Output: 2 servings
Order of preparation:
Cut potatoes, carrot and celery roots at random. Fry cauliflower in butter. Chop the leek. Put prepared foods in a hot broth, season and salt. Before cooking, in 10 minutes, add the pasta, after 5 minutes - chopped spinach. Boil the milk and add to the servings when serving separately.
Recipe 5. Chicken soup with noodles and potatoes with mushrooms
Ingredients:
Chanterelles or champignons 300 g
Poultry broth
Potato 150 g
Onion 250 g
Salt
Red carrots 120 g
Pasta
Oil 70 g
Parsley (leaves)
Spice
Cooking:
Cut the washed and peeled champignons into slices and fry in butter, adding chopped onions, onions, carrots and spices to them afterwards. Cut the prepared potatoes arbitrarily and cook in the chicken broth almost until done: 10 minutes before removing from the stove add “bows” or any pasta of your choice, put in the soup a dressing of vegetables and mushrooms, fresh herbs. Try the dish and add spices if necessary. Can be removed from the stove.
Chicken soup with noodles and potatoes - useful tips and tricks
There are several ways to fix a muddy broth:
If the water with meat has already begun to boil and the moment of removal of the foam is skipped - just add cold water to the pan, turn down the heat and before boiling the foam rises again: do not miss so that you do not have to add water again;
If dressing or dairy products are added to the soup, or served with sour cream, then there is no need to achieve exceptional transparency;
To make the broth transparent, if there is such a need, take a small part from it and dissolve the gelatin in it (10 g / per liter of liquid), pour into the bulk and, cooling, strain through a cloth, and then cook the soup as usual.
Soups need to be prepared in the amount necessary for lunch, because these dishes quickly lose their beneficial properties. The preheated soup has neither vitamins nor taste. But the finished broth can be stored for some time in the refrigerator and even frozen in briquettes.
