Pennsylvania · Soup
Pennsylvania Dutch Chicken Corn Soup
- Intermediate
- 2 h
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with fresh herbs arguing happily on top, a floral thread lifting the aroma.
Ingredients
- 1 whole chicken, about 1.6kg
- 3L water
- 2 onions, halved
- 3 celery ribs
- 2 bay leaves
- 6 ears corn, kernels cut off
- 200g fine egg noodles
- For the rivels: 125g flour, 1 egg, pinch of salt
- Salt, pepper, parsley
- 2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
The skills inside
Straining & passing through a sieveKeeping the cooking liquidRubbing fat into flour
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · egg · celery
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Simmer the chicken with the water, onion, celery, and bay 90 min. Lift out the bird, pull the meat, and strain the broth. 90 min
- Return the broth to the pot, add the corn, and simmer 10 min. 10 min
- Rub the flour, egg, and salt between your fingers into small crumbly rivels and drop them into the simmering broth.
- Add the noodles and cook 6 min more. 6 min
- Return the chicken meat, season well, and finish with parsley and chopped hard-boiled egg.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Rubbing fat into flour 47 recipes
- The fat is cold when it starts and still firm when the rubbing stops, and the bowl has not warmed under the hands.
- Stopped early, while it still looks like coarse crumbs with pieces of fat visible in it, not worked on to a smooth even sand, which means the pieces have gone.
- Nothing is greasy or glossy and nothing has smeared into a paste against the side of the bowl.
- Liquid added last and only enough to bring it together: pressed, it just holds, with no wet patch and nothing sticking to the hand.
- Rested cold before it is rolled or shaped, so the gluten relaxes and the fat firms again after being handled.
Where it goes wrong The fat was too warm, or it was rubbed until the mixture looked uniform. Once the fat has melted into the flour there are no solid pieces left to steam apart in the oven, so the bake is sandy or tough instead of flaky, and nothing done later puts those layers back.
Keeping the cooking liquid 60 recipes
- It was actually kept: the liquid went into a container rather than down the drain, and the volume saved is enough to be worth using.
- It is clean: strained of solids and grit, and not clouded with the debris of whatever broke up in it.
- It tastes of what it cooked and tastes concentrated rather than washed out, and it is not so salty or so bitter that the only honest use is the bin.
- It was cooled quickly and stored cold, not left standing warm on the stove to be dealt with later.
- Used, it does the job the dish gives it (carrying flavour into a sauce, loosening the dish, or setting when chilled) rather than merely adding water back.
Where it goes wrong The pot was left to cool slowly on the stove and only strained the next day, so it soured overnight: what should have been the best ingredient in the dish goes in the bin, and the recipe gets water instead.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Pinot Noir or Gamay
- Also Right
- Chenin Blanc
- From the Taps
- Bière de garde
- Zero-Proof
- Verbena iced tea
Chicken is wine’s most agreeable partner. Match the SAUCE, not the bird: cream to oak, tomato to Sangiovese’s acid, herbs to Loire whites.
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