Chicken soup

Indian version of a hearty chicken soup with a therapeutic blend of spices 🙂

The spices soothe the throat and the the chicken stock helps with the weakness. Turmeric, clove, pepper, cinnamon is a magical blend to help boost immunity and what better way to incorporate these in your meal than in the form of a delicious soup!

This is my aunt’s recipe. It was probably the first time I was sick in the US. My sweet aunt drove 60 miles to pick me up from my university and took me to her home. She told me on the way that she will make chicken soup and khichadi for me. Now those were the two things I hated with a passion at the time and I remember wanting to run away 😛 But glad I didn’t, I was introduced to the best chicken soup that’s there! I also had the khichadi and it wasn’t half as bad as I imagined. The chicken soup was soulful and instantly made me feel better.

This was almost 10 years ago! And to this day chicken soup is a staple on the menu if anyone at home is sick or even for a light winter dinner 🙂 Eventually I also got over my mental block around Khichadi and now have a few versions that I enjoy making and eating quite often!

This recipe makes 3 big bowls of soup

you will need:

chicken 1/2 kg, must be bone-in for a good quality stock

1 tsp ginger garlic paste

1 tsp turmeric powder

salt

lemon juice

2-3 coves

7-8 black peppercorns

2 small pieces of cinnamon

1 medium sized onion finely chopped

1 inch piece of ginger cut in fine julienne

juice of 1 lemon

cilantro/ mint leaves chopped (optional)

salt and water as needed

Procedure:

• Wash the chicken pieces thoroughly and dry
• Marinate the chicken pieces in lemon juice, ginger garlic paste, turmeric and salt and let sit for an hour

• In a large pot, take 1 tsp of oil (I used coconut oil) and add the spices to warm oil (clove, pepper and cinnamon)
• add the chopped onion and some salt and cook covered till the onions sweat. Do not let the onions brown.
• add the marinated chicken to the cooked onions and cover and cook for 10 minutes, making sure no steam escapes as much as possible.

• After 10 minutes, you will notice that the chicken has cooked partially leaving some stock in the pan. To this add 3-4 cups of water and cover again and cook for 10-15 min.
• You know its done when the chicken pieces start falling off the bone and a knife pokes easily through the chunky pieces.

• At this point, I like to remove most of the cooked pieces of chicken and leave only a few in to have with the soup.
• The cooked chicken pieces can be used to make a curry to go with rice or flat breads.
• Another option is to remove all the pieces and just add some back in shredded form.
• The last option is to obviously have all of it like a stew.
• Add salt as needed and extra lemon juice for the much needed dose of Vit C to fight your infection. I love to add chopped cilantro leaves. Mint also works great!
• I sincerely hope you are not sick, so just to clarify, this soup is awesome to have even when you are not down with a throat infection 😛

You can also add some pasta or rice to the soup to make it a one-pot meal.

If you don’t like cilantro, you can also add some chives or scallions.