Chicken Soup Jewish Style 
What is Jewish style you ask? Jewish style chicken soup requires that you use a kosher chicken. There is salt involved in the process of koshering chickens, so it comes ready to boil over with flavor!
This recipe was handed down from my Grandmother to my mother, and the whole family loves it. My nieces and nephews think my mom’s is the best, but my cousins and siblings agree, Grandma Sophie’s Chicken Soup was by far the best ever made on the planet Earth!
Plus, it is cold and flu season, and chicken soup has healing properties for Winter colds!
I use a huge 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!
As stated earlier, 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 am just sad that my son never got to meet my Grandma, she was the best. She was GiGi Sophie to the great grandkids, and yes, she always had Ricky Martin behind her!
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.
FYI: Salt is used to Kasher (make Kosher) a Chicken in order to soak up the remaining blood since Jews are forbidden from consuming any blood. The process uses Kosher(ing) Salt (which has LARGE crystals so it WON’T dissolve back into the Chicken with the blood) sprinkled on the Chicken left for a short period and then completely rinsed off.
It is a complete misconception that Kosher meat/chicken has an excess of salt as NO SALT CAN REMAIN ON THE BIRD AT ALL if it is to be considered kosher!!!
Note: In the last 30+ years and certainly in ALL cases today, the Koshering of meat/chicken is done at the source long before it ever reaches your Kosher market as the Kasheing process must be done within 72 hours of Slaughter and many hold that it must be done within 24 hours.
So, while someone’s Bubbie may have told them that Kosher meat is saltier, I can set your mind at ease that it is not.
Thanks
Rabbi Elli
The Complete Method for Koshering
The meat must first be soaked for a half hour in cool (not ice) water, in a utensil designated exclusively for that purpose. After allowing for excess water to drip off the meat, the meat is thoroughly salted so that the entire surface is covered with a thin layer of salt. Only coarse salt should be used. Both sides of meat and poultry must be salted. All loose inside sections of poultry must be removed before the kashering process begins. Each part must be soaked and salted individually.
If the meat or poultry was sliced during the salting process, the newly exposed surfaces of the cut must now be soaked for a half hour and salted as well.
The salted meat is left for an hour on an inclined or perforated surface to allow the blood to flow down freely. The cavity of the poultry should be placed open, in a downward direction.
After the salting, the meat must be thoroughly soaked, and then thoroughly washed to remove all of the applied salt.
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/82670/jewish/Koshering-Fowl.htm
Sounds delicious!!!!
what are chicken pullets?
A young chicken, I believe before it starts laying eggs.
This sounds really good. I’ve never made my own chicken noodles soup.
looks yummy!
I love new recipes and that its a Kosher meal. Thank you!