Chicken Soup 
It is cold and flu season, so I ran out and bought ingredients to make homemade chicken soup! My favorite Winter food to cure everything!
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! Meanwhile, my son loves my soup, when I do it correctly, I could be more consistent!
I use a humongous pot so I can freeze containers of soup for the next month. Go Big or Go Home!
Jewish Chicken Soup Directions
- Put flanken (or beef short ribs) in a pot with just enough water to cover it.
- Boil the flanken 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.
This is a two day process.
Day 2 of Grandma Sophie’s Chicken Soup Recipe:
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, not rice, not dumplings and not matzoh balls!
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.
True, Kosher chickens are soaked and salted (Kashered – rendered Kosher) but the salt used is COURSE (Kosher) salt and is used to draw out any remaining blood in the chicken. The salt is (by Jewish law) rinsed off since the salt containing the blood is forbidden to consume as is the blood itself.
COURSE (Kosher) salt is used SPECIFICALLY since it doesn’t dissolve into the skin which would render the Chicken not Kosher.
So while it is true that they are salted there is NO significant amount of salt remaining on the Chicken after it has been Kahshered. This is not like brining a Chicken/Turkey at all.
TIA
Can I make this in an instant pot? I miss my mom too. Thanks for your awesome recipes and content.
will be over for a bowl of soup and a good talk. This sounds so good. I miss my grandma’s cooking.
This grandma is going to have to make this soup now. It sounds wonderful.
This looks absolutely delicious! Perfect for cold winter days!
That looks so good. I made some ham red potato cheddar soup Friday. Nothing like comfort food!
love this recipe
That soup looks so good! It is perfect for a cold day like this.