My Culinary Experiment

I like to challenge myself during vacations at home.  I like to try something new.  The kitchen always seems to be the perfect laboratory for that.  So this Spring Break, I decided to make Matzo ball soup from scratch.  My daughter loves Matzo balls and Matzo ball soup.  I happened across some of the soup in a store one day.  Which I found odd.   It's kinda like finding fried okra in New York.  In other words, it's not so common.  Well, she fell in love with it.  I came across a recipe from my Cooking Light magazine and decided to pull out my Dutch Oven I got for VD from the hubby(Yes, it was a great gift!) and give it a shot. 

Step 1:  Roasting the chicken wings and aromatic veggies.....

Cut up some carrots, celery and onion and put them on a tray with chicken wings  in the oven for 40 minutes.  Piece of cake.


Step 2: Scrape all of that into a Dutch Oven ( BTW, could not attempt this before VD, Thanks Hubby!) add 3 cups of water and seasonings and let it simmer for 2 1/2 hours.

The next few steps kinda ticked me off.....

Step 3: I then have to strain it through a mesh sieve and discard the solids ( What?? I have to throw 3 lbs. of chicken away?)  Then cook until it reduces to 6 cups.. Ok, I'm really bad at math, but how the hell do 3 cups of water and some chicken and veggies turn into an amount of liquid that can be reduced to 6 cups!?  I'm pretty sure that I did not have more than 6 cups when I discarded (Really?!?) the solids.

Step 4:  Next I have to combine the chicken stock and 3 chicken leg quarters to cook.  Wait!  WTF?  Didn't I just throw out 3 lbs of chicken wings?  Now I have to add more chicken for the actual soup?  That is messed up!

Step 5: Make the Matzo Balls... ok, this was fun.  This recipe calls for club soda.  I hear that there is a huge debate about whether to use good ole' H2O vs. club soda.  I'm just following this recipe and I reserve to weigh in on that debate until I try it the other way.    So while I'm making these I'm looking at the 5 bottles of club soda I have left because around here the only way you can buy club soda is in 6 packs of 8 oz glass bottles.  An epiphany hits me... hey those MIO liquid water enhancers would turn those into sodas.  Need to share that.

But I digress...

Last step:  Take out the cooked chicken legs and shred chicken to add back to soup...(Ummm, I could have done that with the chicken wing meat you told me to throw out.)  Add Matzo balls, onion,  carrots and celery..... No,  not the onion, carrots and celery that was used to make the stock, new onion, carrots and celery.

So in the end  the soup was very yummy.  However, I should have followed the shortcut  tip ....For a shortcut version, use store bought, unsalted chicken stock instead of making your own.  

To me,  the amount of work and waste involved in making chicken stock was not worth it, but I CAN say that I have made my own chicken stock..

Disclaimer:  I know that there are many recipes for chicken stock and that this is just one of them.