Korean Chicken Soup

Tags

chicken broth, chicken soup, cleaneating, cleaneats, easy recipes, garlic, healthy, Home Cooking, homecooked, Korean, korean chicken soup, Soup

I’ve previously mentioned in an earlier post on how to make clear chicken soup. This recipe is similar except that there’s a lot more garlic and scallions in it. It’s a healthy dish and an easy one to make too. All you need is a little time to draw out the chicken essence into the soup.

Ingredients:

• 1 whole chicken (3 – 4 pounds) – some say that cornish hen works best but as I couldn’t find one, I used an antibiotic free adult chicken
• 10 – 12 garlic cloves
• 1 small piece ginger, sliced
• 1 medium onion, cut into halves
• 3 scallion stalks – white parts
• 1/2 teaspoon whole black peppercorns (optional)
• Codonopsis roots (very much optional!!! I only added this because I had it in hand but the traditional Korean chicken soup does not include any herbs – this excludes the famous Korean Ginseng Chicken soup which has young ginseng and red dates in it)
• 3 Red dates, pitted (again, very much optional)
• Extra chicken bones (optional)
• 10 cups of water
• 3 scallions – green parts, finely chopped to garnish
  salt and pepper to taste

Cooking Instruction:

1. The chicken has to be at room temperature before working with it. If you’ve kept it in the fridge, allow it to sit, covered of course, for half an hour at room temperature.
2. Cut off the wing tips and the tail end. If the chicken came with its head and feet intact, cut those off too. I’m unfortunately squeamish in this area.
3. Remove any excess skin, otherwise the soup will end up overly loaded with oil
4. Remove giblets from the chicken cavity.
5. Wash the chicken under running water and pat dry.
6. On high fire, prepare a pot of boiling water (pot has to be large enough to fit all the ingredients with room to spare so that the water doesn’t come splashing out as it boils)
7. Lower the chicken (and extra bones if you have any) into the boiling water and boil for 3-5 minutes before draining the water from the pot. This step helps to ensure further removal of impurities (blood, gunk, etc)
8. Add the garlic, onion, white parts of the scallions, ginger and peppercorns (and only if you have it, the roots and the dates) to the pot. Lastly add the water. The water level should be at least 2-3 inches above the chicken as it will reduce during the cooking process.
9. Bring everything to a boil over high heat and then reduce the heat to medium-low to simmer, covered for about 40 -50 minutes. During the cooking, skim off any foam that starts floating about on top. Otherwise you’ll have yourself some really murky looking soup!
10. Remove the chicken from the broth and place into serving bowl. If you’ve used extra bones, continue simmering for another 30 minutes. If I were just making regular chicken soup, I’d be simmering the lot for 1.5-2 hours. Doing that would compromise the chicken meat but it makes for extremely flavourful soup. As this recipe goes, the chicken should not be overcooked, yet we need the soup to be flavourful. This is where the extra bones come in handy – you can boil those without caring if they become tasteless in the end!
11. Add salt to the soup to taste.

To serve, you can serve the chicken and the soup in a large decorative soup bowl, garnished with the green scallions.

OR you can ladle some rice into a bowl, top with bite sized chicken bits and pour the soup in, topping everything off with the scallions.

I chose to eat mine with plain rice porridge and some kimchi. Seaweed would have been amazing too!

Truffles Part 6 – Zafferano inspired Clear soup with winter vegetables and pastry with truffles and foie gras

Tags

black truffle, chicken soup, clear broth, comfort food, easy, foie gras, pastry, Puff pastry, Soup, soup bowl, truffle, winter vegetables

I was cracking my head on what else I should do with the remainder of my truffles. I had way too much for myself! Then my sister described a dish that she really enjoyed at Zafferano. I’ve never been to Zafferano myself, but what she described sounded just perfect as it was not heavy and full of cream and fat (well, excluding the foie gras that is). I had been pigging out on heavy, calorie-laden food while making all these truffle dishes. Clear broth sounded amazing then.

Ingredients (per person)

1) Half a foie gras slice, cut into chunks (well you can add more if you like, but remember this is going to be boiled and not seared, thus it would make the soup really oily if you add too much)

2) chicken broth to fill up to slightly more than half of the soup bowl that you will be using

3) 1/4 of a courgette,sliced and quartered

4) 1/4 of a large carrot, sliced

5) 1/4 a large onion, sliced or 3 inches of a white radish, sliced and quartered

6) Truffle shavings

7) 1/4 of a 500g Jus-Rol Frozen Puff Pastry sheet, rolled out in a square shape and trim the ends with a sharp knife. It should be large enough to cover the soup bowl

Instructions

1) Add the vegetables and foie gras to the broth and simmer for about 5 minutes or until vegetables are sufficiently cooked to your liking.

2) Meanwhile preheat your oven temp. to 220ºC or the temperature that is stated on the cooking instructions for your ready made pastry.

3) Ladle out your soup into the bowl, I think it would be best if the soup was warm and not boiling hot because if it is the latter, the steam from the soup will cause the pastry puff sheet to sink down a lot more while baking. Mine totally sunk =(. Lastly add some sliced truffle into the soup. You could add the ends of the truffle, which is difficult to shave but too much of a waste to let go.

4) Place the pastry sheet over the soup bowl and make sure it is securely in place. Using a fork to make patterns (see picture below) helps to secure it in place. You can also go crazy with the patterns. 😉

5) Bake for 15-20 minutes until the puff pastry is all nicely puffed up and golden brown.

6) Told you my dough sank into the soup =(. With the middle bit sunken like that I had to save it somehow, so I draped a couple of sprigs of thyme and shaved the truffles on top

7) It was really good! The pastry and soup together is so comforting ~ Would totally make this again.