A QUICK, LIGHT SOUP
Beautiful soup, so rich and green
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful soup!
Beautiful soup! Who cares for fish
Game, or any other dish?
Who would not give all else for two
Pennyworth of beautiful soup?
~Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll (1832 –1898) Alice in Wonderland (1865)
NOT ALWAYS GREEN, BUT . . .
I read a discussion today about how long chicken stock/soup should be simmered on the stove. Some cooks say all day, some assert that three to five hours is sufficient, with no gain in flavor after five hours.  I’m doing a taste test, tasting at the 3-hr mark, 6 hrs and then after 9 hrs. I don’t like to cook chicken stock much longer than that because the bones begin to impart an unpleasant bitterness. Harder, denser bones like beef and pork are another matter altogether, and do need a minimum of twelve hours over the fire to fully extract all of the flavor.
Please taste before adding salt, and add sparingly. It is hard to remove salt if you add too much, but you can add a potato to the stock to absorb some of the salt flavor. Discard the potato.
Here is a quick egg drop soup that you can whip up while you’re awaiting Chinese take-out or to go with a sandwich. I’ll be making wok later this week, and it also goes well with that.
To make a little more robust soup, you can serve it over heated leftover rice.
TASTE TEST IS IN
There is a marked improvement in the stock cooked for 6 hrs over that cooked for only 3. The difference between the stock simmered for 9 hrs is not as dramatic. So, simmer for at least 6 hrs for a robust chicken stock.
