Polish Soup
CHICKEN SOUP
(Rosół)
INGREDIENTS
4 carrots
1 celery root or 3 celery stalks
2 parsnips
1 leek
2 medium yellow onions
¼ head Savoy cabbage or regular cabbage
3½ pounds chicken parts with bone in
5 allspice berries, aka allspice seeds
3 cloves
6 peppercorns
2 teaspoons salt
4 quarts water or enough to cover vegetables and chicken in pot
2 tablespoon fresh parsley
½ pound thin egg noodles or thin regular noodles
SPECIAL UTENSILS
8-quart pot or 2 4-quart pots
Serves 16. (This recipe is meant for many people. Feel to cut into in half or more.) Takes 3 hours.
PREPARATION
Peel carrots, celery root, and parsnips. Trim leek; keep only white and light-green parts. Leave onions unpeeled and add them to pan. Heat at medium-high heat until you get burn marks. (The burned yellow skins help color the broth.)
Add chicken parts, allspice, cloves, peppercorns, salt, cabbage, carrots, celery root, onions, parsnips, and leek to large pot. Fill pot with enough water to cover everything. Simmer at low heat for 2 hours 30 minutes or until chicken parts are tender and fall off the bone.. Stir enough to prevent burning. Skim off foam as it accumulates on surface to keep the broth clear.
Remove chicken parts, carrots, celery root, parsnips, leek, cabbage, and onions from broth. Tear meat from each chicken part into 4 or more pieces. Cut each cabbage, carrot, celery root, leek, and parsnip into 8 pieces. Remove skins and roots from onions. Cut each onion into 4 pieces. Return all of these ingredients to broth.
About 15 minutes before soup is ready, cook noodles according to instructions on package. Ladle broth with chicken and veggies into serving bowls. Add equal amounts of noodles to each bowl. Dice parsley. Garnish soup with parsley.
TIDBITS
1) People often ask me how much of each ingredient it would take for to make a recipe for everybody in an entire down. Here’s what it would look like for Poway, my fair city.
Ingredients for FEED ALL OF POWAY CHICKEN SOUP
12,141 carrots
3,035 celery roots
6,071 parsnips
3,035 leeks
759 heads cabbage
6,071 yellow onions
10,623 pounds chicken parts
15,176 allspice berries
6,071 cloves
18,212 peppercorns
126 cups salt
2) That’s a lot of food. Buy in bulk.
3) That’s a lot of food to fit in one car. Or even a van. You might want to organize a convoy of vans.
4) But tiny hatchbacks such as the Fit(tm) carry a lot in the back,
5) It’s deceiving I know, but that car can carry of groceries, especially you fold down the rear seats.
6) Anyway, it’s likely no supermarkets, especially the neighborhood ma-and-pa ones have 6,071 parsnips on hand.
7) Nor even the big box stores such as Costco(tm) could fill your ingredients list. You’ll have to go to multiple big stores.
8) All at once. If people hear that all the celery roots, parsnips, and leeks have been cleared out of one store, mass hysteria will ensue. People will start a celery root, parsnip, and leek run the lights of which have never been seen.
9) You and your Feed All Of Poway Chicken Soup pals will have to hit all big box stores at one. You will have to do this with military precision.
10) But then there will be no veggies and roots anywhere in your county. News of this shortage will travel rapidly. Shortages will occur across the land. Celery root-parsnip-and leek riots will erupt across the nation. Police will loose control. Our country will slide into anarchy. Vegetable-and-root lacking people will foment revolution. So on second thought, making this recipe for an entire city is probably not to best thing to do. And it would take a long time to cook.
Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
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