Last Saturday I was trying to figure out my Wordle puzzle. I had one letter left of ROTH and Zeke said B for Broth, a good guess. I tried it and it was wrong. For the first time since I’ve started playing Wordle, I didn’t solve the puzzle and it gave me the correct answer, which was FROTH. I have a couple friends that I share my Wordle score with and I told my friend Katy: “I like broth better than froth.”
As revenge on my Wordle, I decided to make broth. What else was there to do on a rainy, depressing Saturday? I had most of the ingredients, but asked Zeke to pick me up two pounds of chicken wings on his way home and I started my broth. This recipe is from the cookbook Simple to Spectacular: How to Take One Basic Recipe to Four Levels of Sophistication by Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Mark Bittman.
While the title is self-explanatory, the cookbook takes one basic recipe and then adds to it, in increasing levels of complexity and taste. The first recipe in the cookbook is for One-hour Chicken Stock and it’s a good and easy one. It’s so good and easy in fact, that I haven’t tried the other three versions and haven’t really gotten past this one recipe, on page 3 of the cookbook. I want to though!
For now, here is this recipe.
I let the Stock sit in the fridge overnight, skimmed the fat off the top and stripped some of the chicken meat off the wings and added it back in. I also added back some of the carrots and boiled some angel hair pasta in it, to make a Chicken Noodle Soup. While I almost always use a bouillon cube to any soup to amp up the flavor, I find this recipe doesn’t need it. Just a little salt and some bread or crackers on the side and you’re good to go. As a bonus, it makes your house smell wonderful as it simmers; which is just what you need on a dark and rainy Saturday afternoon.
A Simple Stock
Course: SoupDifficulty: Easy6
servings10
minutes1
hour5
minutesIngredients
1/2 large onion
4 cloves
2 pounds Chicken Wings, cut into 3 or 4 pieces each
1 medium carrot, peeled and chopped
1/2 stalk celery, chopped
1/2 leek, trimmed, well washed and chopped
4 cloves garlic
1 bay leaf
10 peppercorns
3 sprigs thyme
Directions
- Stud the onion with the cloves and combine all the ingredients with 6 cups water in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat so that the mixture bubbles steadily but not rapidly. Cook, skimming any foam that accumulates, for about 1 hour.
- Cool slightly, then strain. Refrigerate (you can skim off the fat after the stock cools completely) and use within 3 days.
Notes
- If you don’t have a leek, you can substitute green onions.
- You can substitute 1 teaspoon of dried thyme, if you don’t have fresh.
Sipping once, sipping twice, sipping chicken soup with rice.
Maurice Sendak