My Grandma’s Chicken Soup Recipe!

My grandma made the best chicken soup I ever tasted. My nieces and nephews think their grandma, my mom, makes the best, but I know better! I miss you Grandma Sophie!

Jewish Chicken Soup Directions

• Put flanken (or beef short ribs) in a pot with just enough water to cover it.
• Boil the flanked 5 minutes or so until fat/skim comes to top for you to remove all.  Set aside to cool.
• Clean chicken well. All of it goes into the soup except for the liver.
• Cut carrots in 3-4″ pieces.
• Line bottom of pot with bones, then beef, then chicken, then dill, then parsley, celery, onions, potato, turnip, and carrots. Add cold water (it is a scientific fact that cold water works best, something to do with the collagen in the bones) to cover.
• Bring water to a boil and watch so you can remove top fat constantly before covering, then let simmer/slow boil for 3 hours. Add salt and pepper to taste.
• When soup is ready, strain ingredients keeping soup separate. Save carrots separately in container and then eat or discard what you don’t want. I eat it all!

This is an old Jewish chicken soup recipe, so it calls for kosher chicken, which is salted as part of the koshering process. Regular chicken will require more salt.

Remember – this is a two day process. No one said, Grandma’s Chicken Soup would be easy!

Day 2 of Grandma Sophie’s Chicken Soup Recipe

Once you refrigerate your soup over night, the fat will rise to the top. Remove the fat. Soup tastes better on the second day!  We eat it with thin egg noodles, luction in Yiddish!

My grandma passed away in 2001, and I will always miss her, and I will always remember her chicken soup, made with love, just as they say. My mom now makes this recipe, and all her grandchildren are building these same memories, they love this soup!

This is a wonderful family tradition with the Grandparent cooking love right into the soup!

I now make this recipe as well. My only wish is that someday I will be around to make this for my grandchildren! And, my son has already said, he wants to have the recipe passed down to him. Food is cultural, and this soup is more than a food, it is a bowl of memories.