Uisgea's Recipe

Chicken soup with matzo balls

Category: Recipes

I opened my front door just now to check on the weather. There's snow everywhere. I don't mind that, but I immediately got the sniffles and wanted to put on a sweater and a scarf. Better yet, I wanted to make chicken soup with matzo balls.

This recipe should provide you with about two dozen matzo balls--enough for eight or twelve people, depending on how hungry they are. It's very simple.

2 eggs
1 oz. water
1 oz. chicken fat or butter, softened
2 oz. matzo meal
salt and white pepper at your discretion

Beat the eggs with the water and then stir in the chicken fat/butter. Water and fat don't mix, of course, so don't expect them to readily incorporate. It's not important that they do anyway. You just need to combine them. Add the matzo meal and the s & p and stir it up. The batter should resemble mashed potatoes. Cover it, and stick it in your refrigerator for at least an hour. Get a quart of water up to a gentle boil. Use an ice cream scoop or something similar to shape the batter into golf ballish balls, and drop each one--carefully--into the hot water. Once they're all in, cover your pot and let those lovely little balls simmer for about half an hour. Take them out and serve them in hot chicken soup.

Don't have a recipe for quick and simple rich chicken broth? No worries; I'll be happy to hook you up. The recipe that I'm about to give you yields around a gallon, which is a lot. Feel free to do whatever math is necessary to divide the recipe down into something more manageable. I'd do it for you, but I stink at math and I'd probably get something wrong. Sorry.

4-5 lbs. chicken scraps and bones
5 qts. chicken stock
1/2 lb. mirepoix*
1 small bay leaf
1/4 tsp. dried thyme
1/4 tsp. crushed black peppercorns
5 parsley stems (if you want to, you can get all fancy and tie these last four ingredients up in a cute litte bundle of cheesecloth. If you do, you have a "sachet")
salt and pepper to your taste
chopped fresh parsley for garnish

*--Mirepoix, strictly speaking, is 50% chopped onion, 25% chopped carrot, and 25% chopped celery. Go right ahead and play loosey-goosey with it--you don't have to be a slave to those percentages.

Simmer the chicken bits in the stock for a couple of hours. Skim the accumulating crud off the surface every now and then.

Add the mirepoix and the sachet ingredients and let it all simmmer for another hour or so.

Strain it, and spoon off as much grease as you can. Taste it, and add s & p as you see fit. Garnish it with a few matzo balls and the chopped parsley. Done!