stacey . smoore . the staceyfish . 
Life in a Northern Town: the exploits of an ecstatic Alaskan
Lens: the adventures of a girl and her camera
You'll almost always find soups in my fridge. I'll make a big stock pot's worth on the weekend and eat it throughout the week when I don't have as much time to cook. Since I rely on them so heavily for meals, they're usually nutritious vegetable and lean protein-rich concoctions with full flavor.
By now, you've probably picked up on the fact that I'm very much a make-your-own-ingredients sort of cook. It's not hard to notice that one of my very favorite homemade ingredients to have on hand is chicken stock - it's extremely versatile and oh-so-flavorful. A lot of cooks, though, haven't been properly introduced to the joys and benefits of real chicken stock and so they continue to take a shortcut or two, buying insipid broth in aseptic packaging, not fully realizing what they're missing. So, in this entry, I'm going to try to rectify that.
We'll start with a simple eyeball test. The broth, which for full disclosure purposes was Swanson's reduced-sodium chicken broth, is an unappetizing pale, pale yellow color, paler than even the most watered-down lager. It's so pale, in fact, that when photographed with real stock, it's difficult to make the broth the focal point of the photo because your eye is naturally drawn to the more interesting color. This broth it is, of course, a liquid at room temperature, and when refrigerated, it stays completely liquid, which makes you wonder exactly how much "stock" there is, given that it's the first ingredient listed.
The homemade stock, on the other hand, is a yummy rich dark golden brown. If we're going to stick with the beer comparisons, it brings to mind something like Fat Tire or Shiner Bock. Again, it's a liquid at room temperature, but when refrigerated it turns gelatinous, thanks to the gelatin that leeched out of the chicken bones during cooking.
Clearly, looks aren't everything, so we'll move on to a taste test. The broth has a faint chicken flavor with a chemical-y taste that set off my salt-sensitive palate. It does not taste as watery as one would expect based on its color, thanks to the massive amounts of salt, but its flavor is one-dimensional.
However, when you taste the homemade stock, it has a pronounced and robust chicken flavor. You can definitely tell that there were plenty of herbs and chicken-friendly aromatics in the pot with the chicken, but they don't take center stage, they simply compliment the flavor. There is no trace of salt or other flavor-enhancing chemicals because there aren't any.
You may be wondering how each stacks up in the cost department. Prices for the commercial broth and for stock ingredients vary wildly from place to place, so I'm going to talk in generalities. When you buy broth, you are paying for the labor of making the product, for the packaging, and for the (not insignificant) cost of transporting something that is mostly water and is therefore dense and heavy. We'll estimate that you pay about three bucks, give or take, for a quart of chicken stock.
On the other hand, for stock I buy whole chickens. These are cheaper than whole cut-up birds and are even a pittance when compared with boneless skinless chicken breasts. I save what I don't eat and put it in the freezer for a future stock-making day. Many of the ingredients are kitchen scraps: I save carrot tops, celery leaves, onion skins, and extra herbs or veggies that I know I won't use before they go downhill. Again, everything goes in the freezer for stock-making day. So I have to buy very, very little for actual stock: maybe a leek or bit of parsley. My yields are typically huge: upwards of eight quarts, essentially for about a buck fifty after I bought a leek and some parsley.
Next, we'll compare ingredients.
Broth: chicken stock, contains less than 2% of: salt, favoring, dextrose, autolyzed yeast extract, celery juice concentrate, carrot juice concentrate, onion juice concentrate.
Stock: filtered water, two raw chicken carcasses, one roasted chicken carcass, carrots, celery (with leaves), leeks, onions (with skin), shallots (with skin), garlic (with skin), parsley, thyme, rosemary, sage, whole peppercorns
Note: my recipe varies batch by batch, so this is was I included this last time I made it. Ingredients are obviously not listed by strictly by weight as they would be on a commercial food label. If you're wondering what the chicken carcass is, it's a whole chicken with the edible bits - breast meat and legs - removed, plus fond from roasted chickens.
Now, let's talk. Moving down the Swanson's ingredient list: after the dubious "chicken stock," it's no surprise that salt is the first ingredient. I'd like more information on what that "flavoring" is, too. It's probably artificial. I don't know what dextrose is, but it sounds like a type of sugar and it's certainly not food. Ah, autolyzed yeast extract: this is where I get really mad! The front of the package boldly proclaims "No MSG!" but here's the rub: autolyzed yeast extract contains MSG. How they can get away with that is beyond me, and it makes me really mad. Finally, we come to vegetable juice concentrate. Sure, mirepoix is great for flavoring, but a) why not use the whole food, and b) doesn't it scare you that they use more "flavor enhancers" than actual real flavor ingredients?
If I labeled my stock the same way they did, I would have one ingredient: chicken stock. Even though my ingredient list is much longer, notice that all of the ingredients are whole foods. My point is that we don't know what is in the "chicken stock" that is the first ingredient on their list. My guess is that it was approximately two chicken bones in four gallons of water, because for a company like that, chicken bones are going to be expensive to use en masse.
If a comparison of the ingredient list hasn't sent you running for the hills, let's look at how they actually perform in the kitchen. I have found out the hard way that using commercial broth as a basis for soups is a recipe for disaster. D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R. I'm so not even kidding here. There is so much salt that it's all you can taste, and if the liquid reduces at all, the broth is rendered completely inedible. A bit of reducing is naturally going to happen during the simmer that soups require, so you can quickly see where this is heading. Just don't do it. On the other hand, homemade stock makes a perfect base for soups. Its rich flavor generally complements soup ingredients, adding interest to even the most basic vegetable soup.
However, homemade stock is not perfect in every situation. Even when diluted, the gelatin in stock interferes with grain dishes, so it's a no-go in things like rice or quinoa. But you can't use commercial broth here either, because guess what happens when cooking grains? The liquid reduces, so... yeah, that's a dealbreaker.
I will grudgingly admit that commercial broth is not horrible in every single situation and, in a pinch, I have been known to use it before. If it's just a small ingredient in a recipe and there are a lot (a lot) of other liquids that allow the terrifyingly huge amounts of sodium to diffuse and dilute, it can be done. I don't recommend it, but in situations like you've just moved into a house and haven't made a pot of stock yet, or you're staying with a loved one who needs to be nursed back to health and they don't have any of the real stuff on hand, it can come in handy as a last resort.
Now for an unbiased look at the two, side by side. I did my very best to represent the two contestants as they really are: I set the light meter by the white plate instead of the subject (the broth or stock), used the exact same exposure, shot them scant minutes apart to ensure uniform lighting, and when editing, used the exact same settings to fix contrast. In my mind, the choice is clear - or, more fittingly, opaque.
So, to sum up, look at it this way: store-bought chicken broth is like Pamela Anderson: a cheap blond bombshell enhanced with chemicals and additives - so processed that you can't even tell that a living creature was the basis for the product before you.
By now, you've probably been able to tell that I'm having a love affair with Rancho Gordo beans. They're just so damn good (and good for you) - I can't help trying to put them into every food imaginable. I love them so much that someone who possibly lives in my house may have possibly placed an order for 45 pounds of beans from them a couple of weeks ago. My thinking was that I was buying a year's worth of beans, but at the rate I'm finding fantastic recipes, the ten pounds of garbanzos may only last a couple of months. We're not even going to mention the fifteen pounds of black beans and fifteen pounds of borlottis that arrived in the same shipment. But I digress.
I've recently started reading the Rancho Gordo blog and was ecstatic to find this particular recipe on there last week. It sounded so delicious, so healthy, and so satisfying, that I had to hurry up and make some chicken stock post-haste (as we had just run out two days before - like I've said before, the stuff burns a hole in my freezer) so that I could put this soup on the table.
Clearly, I hadn't really been paying attention when I read up on the ingredients - I must have just been skimming for the produce I would need to add to the grocery list. So I didn't really notice that it called for cinnamon until I was mise en place-ing everything. It was such a pleasant surprise though - we Americans are really missing out by regarding cinnamon as a wholly sweet spice rather than something that can be used to great effect in savory dishes. It brought a whole new dimension to the soup: adding a fullness not otherwise present and bringing to mind the most comforting of comfort foods. Try this on a cold, dreary winter night with a glass of lush cabernet and discover it for yourself!
Click here for the recipe for "Chickpea soup with Swiss chard and barley" »
It doesn't matter how long you've been cooking. It doesn't matter what your favorite cuisine is or whether or not you actually know that you're looking for something: there is a recipe out there for each of us that we have been yearning to make.
In this dish, I found mine: whether I knew it or not, zuppa di farro is the type of Italian food I've been trying to make since I learned how to cook.
No, it's not smothered in tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese. It isn't pasta and there is neither a meatball nor a wine-soaked pan-fried chicken cutlet to be found. But this, folks, is the real deal - it's not Italian-American, it's apologetically Tuscan.
Not that the Tuscans have a single thing to apologize for in their cuisine. The days I spent in Florence and Siena were non-stop food bliss. And though I never tried this soup while I was over there, as soon as I tasted it I knew that zuppa di farro was unmistakably at home there.
Cesare Casella, the author of this recipe's cookbook, said that this soup is like the Italian equivalent of chicken soup - it cures all ills. It screams comfort food, and the moment it hit my lips I wished that the temperature would drop a good forty degrees and that the rain would start falling in sheets from the sky. So the next time a day like that rolls around, take my advice: put on a cozy chunky sweater and lounge around the house with a good book in your hand and a somnolent hound at your feet while a pot of this simmers away on the stove.
I have been meaning to post this for a loooooonnnggg time. In fact, if the word "long" was as long as the length of time I've waited to post this recipe, it would be approximately sixty-three syllables long. But I digress.
I've long had a soft spot for minestrone. It's such great comfort food, and super-healthy to boot. I suppose that soup is normally a fall or winter endeavor, but here I'm going to give a Tucson summer (the fact that it's late September is irrelevant - it's in the upper nineties today) the finger and make this soup anyway. That'll show the bloody weather!
There I go with my digressions again.
I've been through a lot of phases with this soup. I first got hooked on it at an Italian restaurant when I was a teenager, so when I started cooking a lot of vegetable soups after I moved to Alaska I decided to try this one out. To be honest, I hated my first attempt. I hadn't yet started making my own chicken stock, and this was when I learned the hard way that using commercial chicken broth as the base for a soup is Officially a Bad Idea because it is Utterly Repugnant. However, at the time, I didn't know that was the cause, so I just thought the recipe was a dud.
Many months later, something strange came over me and I decided to try it again - on unsuspecting dinner guests, no less. This time I was using homemade stock, and when I put the stuff in my mouth I had a foodgasm. It was that good. But because I am crazy, I am hardly ever 100 percent satisfied with a recipe, no matter how good it is. I decided that what this soup needed was an improvement in the bean department. Since then, I've tried all manner of beans: pinto, cannellini, kidney, great Northern whites, and heavenly borlottis. But all of these were canned and none of them were quite right.
Enter Rancho Gordo beans! These heavenly heirloom beans are as fresh as dried beans can get, especially when compared with lowly supermarket beans that are more than likely about five years old, which explains why those inferior beans cook slowly, unevenly, and blandly. This company carries many little-known and rare varieties of beans, including - look out for the squeeing - borlottis! I tried them for the first time when I was throwing together this soup, and finally, I have found my 100 percent satisfaction. These creamy, velvety, supremely flavorful beans add an entirely new level of flavor that ties minestrone together perfectly. It is definitely worth the time to find and cook the beans. And considering that I only just discovered the key to bean bliss, it was also worth the wait in posting this recipe!
I have no problem admitting it: I am a garlic freak. It may well be the most perfect herb: flavorful, tangy, plentiful, and easy to store. I have yet to meet a recipe that has too much garlic in it, and when I was in Korea I ate the stuff raw by the clove. When I'm cooking I routinely add fourfold the garlic called for. What's not to love?
Well, apparently there is something, since I said it was the most perfect, not the perfect herb. Let's face it: it's not too terribly difficult for good, well-intentioned garlic to go wrong. Garlic, even more than onions, can make you cry. They can pack remarkable heat into their little cloves, and if cooked improperly, you'll know all about it.
So when it came time for me to make a garlic soup (which is an idea I had been obsessing about ever since my husband bought me a garlic cookbook as a sussy), I was definitely looking for a recipe that would exploit the warm, earthy, comforting aspect of the humble clove, not the part that can make you wish that you've never been born. If I had ready access to Korean garlic that would not be a problem, since the stuff is sweet an delectable without any fuss or preparation beyond peeling it. But alas, all I have around me is American garlic. There had to be some way...
Well it turns out the that clever folks at Cook's Illustrated had been wondering the same thing. They devised an ingenious method that used three different types of cooked garlic to give this soup an earthy pleasantness that pairs perfectly with the potatoes in the soup. My favorite by far is the poached garlic heads. Slow, long heat does wonderful things to garlic by stripping away the bitterly painful flavors, softening both texture and taste. So even though in this soup you are preparing garlic in three different ways, this recipe is wonderfully simple, uncomplicated, and well-balanced
Comfort food, anyone?
Growing up, I never quite understood why chicken noodle soup was supposed to be such great comfort food. Then again, all I had had back then were Campbell's or otherwise canned versions, and frankly, I think it would be more comforting to be beaten up with a can of soup than it would be to eat that not-very-chickeny-really-freakin'-salty-and-gross stuff.
But then I remembered my Mom's famous turkey soup. It wasn't so different from a chicken noodle soup, yet it was infinitely tastier. Maybe there was hope for this much-maligned recipe after all...
I first tried my hand at a, well, decidedly modern take on the stuff that I found in the Mayo Clinic cookbook. It had a chicken stock and soy milk base with edamame in the soup, and well.... it was weird. I didn't like it. But then.... last winter I was just getting into making my own stock and had had wild success with using it as the base for soups - even with recipes I had panned when I had made them with commercial chicken broth (forgive me, for I knew not what I had done). So I got to thinking that maybe it was time to give chicken noodle soup another shot, and this time I was determined to give it a fair shot.
Disillusioned by my first disaster with the stuff, I swore off recipes and struck off on my own. Amazingly, I hit paydirt on my first try. I had stumbled upon the First Law of Soups (anything made with a homemade stock is guaranteed to not be bland, boring, or disgusting) and the Second Law of Soups (always cook your noodles or grains in the stock).
Unfortunately, stock tends to burn a hole in my freezer. I just can't keep the stuff on hand, I use it as soon as I make it. If I do happen to have some in there, I'm usually saving it for something specific. But tonight I found myself with quarts and quarts of it in my freezer, even above and beyond what I will need for my upcoming minestrone soup. I also just so happened to have the salvaged chicken from my last pot of stock handy, and I realized that once again, this soup's time had come. I mean, it's been a tough week. I could use some comfort food. Thankfully, I've finally found a way for this time-honored classic to actually be comforting.
Click here for the recipe for "Actually comforting chicken noodle soup" »
When Cory and I arrived in Florence, one of the first things I noticed on menus at local restaurants was tomato and bread soup. I had never heard of it and honestly was thinking, well, something close to "ew."
But then there was Il Latini, the renowned restaurant that hasn't lost its local charm despite its fame (which I have already described in my Panna Cotta entry). Since it was our last night in Tuscany and we had finally found the Florence restaurant of our dreams -- the restaurant that we had literally stumbled across, having gotten lost in the streets in our quest for food -- I decided to branch out and try some of the truly local cuisine. Even though we were offered many, many delicious options for our primi, I ordered the pappa al pomodoro.
As soon as the waiter set the bowl down in front of me all of my previous expectations evaporated. I had been imagining something much like American tomato soup, thin and watery with an assertive salt flavor. Instead I was served a hearty, thick, delicious soup with deep tomato and bright basil flavor. Its texture on the tongue is like no other soup I've ever had. Cory, with his singularly amazing gnocchi, was something akin to jealous.
So, unsurprisingly, Cory and I started looking for a way to duplicate this soup experience when we got back to the States. The William-Sonoma Florence cookbook had disappointing results (which is a cautionary tale to American cooks that what we consider to be aromatics like celery and carrots will never ever stand a chance against plenty of fresh basil), and I was almost beginning to despair until I remembered that in the front window of Il Latini a TV was playing a tape of the international media coverage the restaurant had gotten -- and they had played a clip of Rachel Ray's $40 a Day. Feeling slightly dirty (to put it delicately, I'm not the world's biggest fan of Ms. Ray), I hunted down the episode online, and lo and behold, she had their recipe!!! Cory and I cooked it together, and it was everything we remembered and brought back wonderful memories of that night in Florence.
So if you can't make it to Florence yourself, at least do yourself this favor and make this soup. It's so representative of how Italians can take something most Americans would throw away (stale bread), add it to a couple of fresh, simple ingredients, and create something warm, delicious, and satisfying.
Click here for the recipe for "Pappa al Pomodoro - Tuscan tomato and bread soup" »
Be careful: homemade chicken stock is another one of those "you can never go back" recipes.
I remember a little over a year ago, I made minestrone soup for the first time. It's one of my favorite soups, but I couldn't understand why it was so..... blase. Despite the fact I had used fresh ingredients and used the proper technique, it wasn't worth making again, and I stuck with my usual soup staple, Provencal Vegetable Soup.
About a year later I was having some friends over for an Italian night - caprese salad, various pastas with homemade sauces, and affogatos. Something was missing and (being ignorant of the traditional Italian primi and secondi) I decided to add in minestrone soup.
So I tried again. Talk about night and day! It was like the first batch I had made was anti-minestrone and if the two batches had ever met they would have annihilated each other. The only difference? The fantasmagorically delicious minestrone was made with homemade stock instead of commercial chicken broth.
Every recipe I've used with this stock has sung with flavor. Why? That flavor comes from tons of fresh ingredients and no salt. It's a recipe that I've adapted from more traditional chicken stock recipes to fit the way I cook. I roast a bird one week, save the carcass, skin, and fond and after I roast another bird the next week I combine the two carcasses with any leftover meat and tons of aromatics. This way I'm getting maximum use out of those chickens with minimal waste.
And it is so worth it!
