With the onset of cooler weather, I have declared it “soup season” in my kitchen. And what better soup to greet autumn than chicken soup? Unfortunately, I do not have a long-honored family recipe for it, so I turned to a friend whose chicken soup is outstanding. Luckily, when I called, she was about to prepare a big batch of it to serve during the Jewish New Year, so I sat in her kitchen watching her, checking out her ingredients, and taking good notes.
If you decide to use the recipe below, thank Leslye Heilig, a retired pediatrician who lives in Great Barrington. Heilig’s twin daughters are now grown and have their own households, one in Spain, the other in western Missouri. But even without children at home, she or her husband Lou make dinner every night. “We always ate at home as a family,” she says, “and now our daughters do the same.”
Making dinner is not the only culinary activity in Heilig’s life. She and Linda Baxter, a retired nurse midwife, founded a local chapter of Dining for Women, a national organization with chapters all over America. The groups most often meet once a month, typically in a woman’s home or in the meeting hall of a local church or school. Everyone brings a dish, and somehow they miraculously end up with just the right mixture of main dishes, salads, and desserts.
At the dinners, the women learn about a vetted grassroots program for women, share a meal and make donations, which, collected month after month add up impressively. The Great Barrington chapter has collected over $55,000 in less than five years. Dining for Women is the world’s largest educated giving circle dedicated to transforming lives and eradicating poverty among women and girls in the developing world.
But I digress. The main topic here is Heilig’s chicken soup. It, like a lot of what she cooks, comes from family recipes. In this case, she had a list of ingredients, but no instructions, so she consulted a lot of cookbooks to fill in the gap. This recipe was her mother’s gift to Heilig’s sister on her 40th birthday, a week before her mother died.
Making a truly good chicken soup is an all-day affair, although actual time at the stove is minimal. You need a really big pot that can hold a whole chicken, along with lots of fresh vegetables. And you need to stick around the house while the soup is doing its thing so you can check it from time to time.
Leslye Heilig’s Mother’s Chicken Soup
Use a 12 quart pot
1 chicken, preferably a kosher chicken for they have more fat, and that means greater flavor.
1 handful of kosher salt
Bunch of dill
Bunch of parsley
2 large onions
2 leeks
2 parsnips
5 stalks celery, leaving leaves on
2 turnips* (sometimes she substitutes a rutabaga)
1 carrot per person to be served (cut each into several large pieces)
*Despite Heilig’s respect for Mark Bittman, says disagrees with his dictum not to put turnips in soup.
Put the chicken in a large pot, cover with cold water, and bring to a boil. Then skim the foamy debris from the chicken and discard. Add the salt and all the vegetables, and again bring to a boil. Then cover the pot, and turn down to simmer for hour. Try to keep the temperature down to a slow rolling boil (simmering) for 6-8 hours.
After the requisite number of hours (think all day), take the soup off the burner to let it cool in the pot. When it has cooled off a bit, remove the vegetables (except the carrots, which are saved) and put them in a colander over a bowl so you can press the liquid out of them to pour back in the pot. You can either save the vegetables to puree for use in another dish, or simply discard them. The carrots can remain in the soup, or not. At this point, Heilig uses the chicken for a salad, or pulls it apart and puts the meat back in the soup. And voila, there’s delicious soup for you and yours.
Whatever Heilig makes, it’s in huge volume irrespective of how many she has to serve. “I can’t cook in small quantities,” she says. And that’s why she freezes the soup (but not the chicken) for future meals.
As we head into autumn, which turns into winter all too fast, making chicken soup is a pleasant way to spend a day, knowing that in the end, you will have an exceptionally delicious soup to enjoy.
