Tastes Like Chicken Soup
Published September, 29 2005 1:01 am
Occasionally, I go through a phase during which I try to cook everything “from scratch,” with pure, fresh, natural ingredients. The first ingredient to be villianized during such phases is parve chicken soup mix, or, as Carmel calls it, “Tastes Like Chicken Soup.”
On my saner days, however, I tend to regard such mixes as valuable additions to the pantry. As long as they are not overused, phony chicken soup mixes can add a needed dimension of flavor to meatless soups and certain other recipes. Last Rosh HaShanah, I discovered that, with the right additions, they can even provide the base for a very tasty vegetarian matsa ball soup.
The broth can be prepared in tandem with real chicken soup, using the same vegetables, herbs, and spices. (For me, that means carrots, celery, onions, fresh dill and parsley, dried tarragon, and freshly ground pepper.) The key to a genuinely flavorful vegetarian broth is to caramelize the onions. This can be done by cooking the onions in margarine or vegetable oil over high heat for 10 minutes, and then over medium-low heat for an additional 30-45 minutes. The vegetables should be cut into spoon-sized pieces and sauteed, and the herbs should be finely chopped.
Sound like stone soup? Well, it’s not. The mix is vital. Don’t exceed the proportion of mix to water recommended on the package, though, at least at the outset. You can add more at any point if the soup seems to bland.
I keep telling myself that I’ll make batches of beef and chicken stock to keep in my freezer for recipes. In reality, I never get around to it, and rely on the powdered stuff too. Unfortunately, the powdered soup mixes come with sizeable doses of salt. I wonder - would stock made with koshered meat be any saltier than treyf meat?
For this Rosh Hashana I plan to let my gourmet side take over - I’m going to be serving Consomme Printaniere. Yes, it’s basically chicken soup, but consomme undergoes a process of clarification, whereby the soup is transformed into a crystal-clear broth. The Printaniere refers to the garnish - small pieces of carrot, zucchini and turnip, cut with a tiny melon-baller. It comes straight from “Jacques Pepin Celebrates”.