Once in a while Tony reminisces about the time everyone in the house was passing around a sickness. I don’t know how long we went with at least one person being sick, until at one point three people were sick at the same time. Finally I said, “I’ve had it, I’m making chicken soup.” He says everybody starting feeling better afterward. I’ve been feeling a bit achy and today my daughter gave blood and it wiped her out and Tony tried giving blood (he has given 16 gallons to date!) but they told him he had a fever, so I said, “That’s it, I’m making chicken soup.”
My grandma sometimes referred to a Hungarian cookbook called Mama’s Recipes that she got for a $1.50 donation to the St Elias Byzantine Catholic Church Building Fund (1965). The chicken soup recipe in that book includes half a kohlrabi, a tomato, two potatoes, and 1/4 head of cabbage. To me that means put in whatever vegetables you want. Kohlrabi is not popular in modern grocery stores, although it’s at the organic markets and sometime farm markets. It looks like a cross between a turnip and a cabbage without leaves. Next time I see one I’ll get it, but for my chicken soup the only necessities are carrots and celery.
I cut the vegetables in the sizes that I want them when they’re in my bowl. I cut the chicken in pieces first for chicken soup – for no particular reason – but also put in the leftover parts I’m not going to use (not the skin) to make the broth. Make sure you empty the cavity. Sometimes you can get small pieces of bone in the broth, so strain the juice at the end and only keep the vegetables then rinse out the strainer, discarding the parts of the chicken you don’t want. Remove the meat from all of the good pieces of chicken and put half of it in the soup and reserve the other half to make a chicken salad, pot pie, or other entrée on another day.
You can buy the tiny noodles in a bag, but I’m making them here so you can see it done. Homemade noodles are softer and taste better than store-bought. I roll out the dough until I can see through it. Let it dry enough so they don’t stick together when you cut them, but don’t let them get too hard/dry before cutting. The cut noodles can be dried out and stored to cook in the future. I have a video below that shows cutting the noodle dough. Add the cooked noodles to the bowls of soup, not the soup pot where they’ll absorb too much liquid.
Hungarian Chicken Noodle Soup (Csirke Leves)
1 3-5 lb. chicken, cut in pieces
3 chopped carrots
2 sliced celery stalks including leaves
1 small sliced onion
1/4 C chopped fresh parsley
1 T paprika
1 t sea salt
1/4 t ground black pepper
Put the chicken parts in a pot and cover with 8 cups of water and bring to a boil. Skim any fat off the top to keep it clear. Turn down to simmer and add everything else. Continue to simmer for 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
Take the pieces of chicken out of the pot with tongs as best you can and strain the remaining juice. Spoon out the vegetables and add them back into the juice. Remove the chicken from the bones of a breast, leg, and thigh and add back to the juice. Spoon soup into bowls and add noodles to each bowl.
Matchstick Noodles (Gyurt Teszta)
1 egg
3 egg yolks
3-6 T very cold water
2 C flour
Beat egg and yolks well. Add flour and 3 tablespoons water. Work with hands until absorbed, adding more water slowly if necessary. Knead until smooth (8-10 minutes). Divide in three parts. Roll out each part until paper thin. Let set to dry (while soup simmers).
Cut each piece of dough in narrow strips and stack them. Cut into desired widths with a sharp knife, cutting 1/8” for fine and 1/2” for wide. Separate and drop in boiling water until noodles rise to the surface. Rinse in cold water and serve with soup.
