Welcome to a very special edition of No Free Lunch. For the first time, I'm featuring a dish not made by me. Ariel so kindly made me a pot of Matzo Ball Soup with the secret family recipe, to which you, my dear readers, are now privy to. With great power comes great responsibility; use this information with care. This soup is relatively simple in ingredients, but it is very tasty. The matzo balls are soft and tender, but they don't fall apart either. The chicken, cooked for 3 hours, falls right off the bone. This soup is quite reminiscent of the chicken and dumpling soup typically enjoyed by us gentiles, but the matzo balls are on a scale like nothing I've seen since experiencing the knödel of Germany.
Ingredients
Soup
Instructions
- One whole chicken
- 1 bag baby carrots
- 1 bag celery
- 1 large onion
- Dried parsley
- 2 bay leaves
- A lot of Salt
- Black pepper
Matzo Balls
- 4 eggs
- 1/2 cup cold water
- 2 Tbs oil
- Dash pepper
- 1 cup matzo meal
Soup
Cut the chicken into quarters. Place chicken, carrots, onion, and celery in a large stock pot. Fill up the pot with water. Sprinkle a bit of parsley and black pepper. Generously salt the water, remembering that the pot is large and there is a lot of soup in there. Add bay leaves and bring to a boil, then reduce to simmer. Simmer for 3 to 4 hours.
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| Consider the gargantuan scale of this pot. |
After simmering, fish out the onion and bay leaves, and discard them. Take out all the chicken and discard all bones, skin, and other undesirable parts. Set the chicken meat aside until serving.
Matzo Balls
Crack eggs in a bowl and beat. Add water, oil, and pepper. Mix together. Add the matzo meal and mix this in as well. Refrigerate the mixture for 1 hour.
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| Matzo meal mixture before forming balls |
Form into balls no more than 2 inches in diameter. Size is up to your preference. Be aware they will absorb water while cooking and swell somewhat. Bring water to a boil in a large pot. Salt the water like you were making pasta. Cook the balls for 20 minutes. Push them down once when they float.
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| Matzo balls after cooking |
To assemble the dish, heat up the chicken separately. Add however many matzo balls you and your pals intend to eat into the soup. Heat up the soup on the stovetop. Put the chicken in bowls and pour soup over them. Add matzo balls to each bowl.
I'm happy to see Ariel getting in on the blogging game. I hope you guys have a good week. As our friend David Bowie says on a certain excellent and underrated album: "It's not the side effects of the cocaine. I'm thinking that it must be love."
ReplyDeleteIn the case of our dear Mr. Bowie, it was almost certainly both. I love a bit of Station to Station.
DeleteI have only had matzo ball chicken soup twice, both times at the same place. It was the unlikely place of the restaurant in the Hyatt Regency Hotel located in Denver's Tech Center area. The restaurant specialized in this soup. It came in a large shallow white porcelain crock. The broth was very clear but very flavorful. The chicken pieces were torn from a whole chicken and the matzo balls were excellent. It came piping hot. It was meant to be a main course. Actually, Ariel's looked almost exactly the same as what I had many years ago. Very nice. Good going, Ariel. I am hungry looking at it.
ReplyDeleteGlad you liked it, love! Remember, soup has important healing powers. It will, in fact, cure you when you are sick. And its just pretty magical.
ReplyDeleteAnd Mr. Wai, I am sure this is Matzoball soup in your future.
Thanks, Ariel. I sure hope that there is Matzoball soup in my future. I was just curious so I went to the website of the Tech Center Hyatt Regency (Denver) to check the menu of the cafe. Sure enough, they still have it on the menu ($7). I used to travel there and always hoped that I would have time to have Matzoball soup. I only got to do it twice. For being a simple hotel cafe that doesn't even open in the evening, they have some interesting stuff including a wild boar sandwich, a stout pecan pie and many Colorado brews. I agree with the therapeutic aspect of chicken soups. Jason may dispute such soft science or no science. It may just be the placebo effect. As long as there is an effect, I am good for it. It tastes good also. What is there not to like? I also love the chicken soup at the Fargo restaurant called Acapulco which Sebastian has covered in this blog earlier. The last time I ordered it at Acapulco, the older Mexican lady there asked me with great concerns shown on her face if I was sick. Very cute. I told her I just loved her soup. Sebastian's grandma makes a chicken dumpling soup that looks a lot like your Matzo version. It has rutabagas in it for the signature Scandinavian touch.
DeleteAlso, this needs a Passover label now that you have one.
ReplyDelete