Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Chicken Soup Made Easy
I’ve served you matzo ball soup before. But who has time to brown the chicken pieces? And besides, no one likes to pick meat off the bone when they’re drinking soup. It’s so messy.
Word to the wise: don’t do a Google image search for “chick” with SafeSearch off — unless, of course, you’re in the mood for that sort of thing.
So. Chicken & Matzo Ball Soup. To serve three or four people, you’ll need:
- 1 5-pack of boneless chicken thighs
- 1 large thing of Swanson’s Organic Chicken Stock
- 1 big shallot, chopped medium-fine
- 1 garlic clove, chopped medium-fine
- 3 good-sized button mushrooms, sliced
- Manischewitz matzo meal
- butter
A typical matzo ball recipe requires:
- 1/2 cup matzo meal
- 2 large eggs
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 2 tablespoons chicken stock
- 1 teaspoon of salt
Beat together everything except for the matzo meal and then stir in the matzo meal. Let it sit for fifteen minutes. Meanwhile . . .
Melt a hunk of butter (2 tablespoons?) and fry your shallots until soft. Add chopped garlic clove and mushrooms and stir until the mushrooms are soft. Add the chicken stock and bring to a simmer.
Cut up the thighs into bite-sized pieces. Add to the simmering soup.
Add rounded spoonfuls of the matzo ball mixture (which should, by now, have been sitting around for at least fifteen minutes) to the soup. Stir. Simmer for fifteen to twenty minutes.
Fress.
Yeah, sure, you can add whatever else you like to this — celery, parsley, carrots, you name it. But the joy of this recipe lies in its simplicity. Such a quick prep time. So few dishes to wash.
D.
But those aren’t CHICKS!
Cute, but not chicks.
Technically, chicks are baby chickens, and baby ducks are ducklings. But, in less technical usage, “chick” can be used to describe any young bird.
Therefore, they are chicks! 😉
Life is too short to use “SafeSearch”, or “NetNannyMolester”, or whatever you kiddies are using now-a-days. Enjoy and buy some hand lotion: those are words to live by!
Saw your recipe, where’s the schmaltz? The chicken thighs don’t have enough!
Dan: I should know that. I wrote a damn trilogy about birds.
Michael: follow the link to that older chicken soup recipe. That one uses full pieces (bone, skin, etc.) so it is schmaltz-positive. In this recipe, I cut corners intentionally to see if the result would be edible or an abomination. Result: not as good as the real deal, but not an abomination; and certainly better than anything else I might have whipped up in such a brief prep time.
Welcome to B&W, by the way!
Doug: Did you get your trilogy published yet?
Michael: Fancy meeting you here. 😉
Gaaaah no. It needs some serious editing, still, and somewhere in the middle of all that editing, I began a romance, and now I’m editing the romance . . . you get the idea.
Great site! I stumbled upon it after doing a search for eustachian tube dysfunction. I consider it a bonus to get recipes for chicken soup–must be the MD in you!