Quote:
Originally Posted by Tulip
For a person who doesn't know how to cook, this ain't enough direction.  However, I will try. Hopefully it'll turn out good.  This should be healthier than canned chicken soup. |
Yeah, better flavor of the veggies and meats, less (or improved portion control) of the salt.
Soup is
the dish for the don't-know-how set. It's very forgiving so long as it remains liquid.
How to get up to your elbows in chicken soup the first time:
Chicken stock: store up used chicken bones in the freezer until you can fill up a tall pot (a stockpot, so used because not too much water evaporates from its top, and besides, they have lids too) most of the way with bones and scraps. Optional salt, some carrots onions and celery if you've got any or all of, some black pepper and a bay leaf or two, bring to a boil, simmer maybe an hour, cool rapidly either by straining through a sieve or colander into mixing bowls or something, transfer into freezable containers (leave room at the top for frozen stock to expand into) and freeze or fridge right off. Chicken stock makes up pretty fast compared to brown or beef stock, and should be cooled off fast.
Stock is made mainly with simmering bones with scraps, etcetera; broth is made by simmering the meat, and you shouldn't simmer the meat too long or all its flavor will be gone into the broth and the meat that's left goes totally boring.
Use stock just about like water to make soup with. You can simmer it down to make it concentrated, with its flavors intensifying.
That mirepoix is the same mix of onions, carrots, and celery -- veggies to flavor the soup and add nutrients, particularly minerals and vitamin A. That's right, you use it both in making the stock, and again for making the soup. Use chicken with no gristly bits in it, like diced breast meat. (Chicken
with gristly bits makes for good stock material. Then shred the remaining meat for inclusion in chicken salad, with more breast meat.)
To braise meat of any kind: put it in a frying pan with a little splash of stock so the meat isn't frying dry, and cook slowly on a low flame. A simmer is enough, a vigorous boil is too hot, turn it down. I usually cover the frying pan with a lid that fits. Add stock if it all steams away. The meat comes out tender and moist.
Noodles: Jinx is telling you to boil the noodles up in preparation, and cool them swiftly after cooking by rinsing them in a strainer under cold water for a moment. When your soup is pretty much cooked, in go the noodles. The quick cooling is to keep them with a strong noodleness and not go mushy and lose flavor (they don't have so much by themselves) from overcooking, nor mess with the soup's fluid volume as they would if you poured them in dry, as they would then suck up a lot of the water.
Hooray, good soup. Try squirting a wedge or two of lime into it on serving. Tropically tasty and vitamin C too.
Buy cookbooks or sift through the Internet for recipes aimed at the For-Dummies set. Oriental-type cookbooks profusely illustrated with how-to photographs are excellent teachers for somebody with no instructor -- for Oriental food anyway.