Alsace & the North · Soup
Waterzooi de Poulet
- Intermediate
- 40 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, acid holding everything up to the light, settling low and earthy.
Ingredients
- 1 chicken, 1.6 kg, jointed
- 1.2 litres light chicken stock
- 40 g butter
- 2 leeks, white only, in fine julienne
- 3 carrots, in fine julienne
- 2 celery sticks, in fine julienne
- 200 g celeriac, in fine julienne
- 4 waxy potatoes, quartered
- 3 egg yolks
- 200 ml double cream
- 1 lemon
- Chervil and parsley, chopped
- Salt and white pepper
The skills inside
Sweating aromatics: soft, never brownedThe bare simmer: holding liquid below the boilSkimming: foam, fat and a clear brothKnife cuts: dice, julienne, bias
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: dairy · 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
- Sweat the leek, carrot, celery and celeriac in the butter with a pinch of salt until the leek smells sweet and nothing has taken any colour.
- Lay the chicken on the vegetables, pour in the stock, add the potatoes and hold at a bare shiver until the thigh reads 74C (165F) and a knife slides through the potato.
- Lift out the chicken and the vegetables and keep them warm, then skim the fat off the broth and taste it for strength.
- Whisk the yolks and cream together and slacken them with two ladles of hot broth poured in a thread, then return the mixture to the pan off the heat.
- Stir over the lowest possible heat until the broth thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon, 78 to 82C (172 to 180F), then finish with lemon, chervil and parsley and ladle it over the chicken.
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.
Skimming: foam, fat and a clear broth 73 recipes
- It is held below a rolling boil for the whole time. Agitation drives fat and fine protein into the liquid as an emulsion, and nothing skimmed afterwards will take them back out.
- The grey foam that rises in the first minutes is lifted off and discarded rather than stirred back in.
- Fat is taken from the surface where it gathers, the pot moved off the centre of the heat if that is what it takes to collect it in one place.
- The liquid is visibly clearer at the end than it was at the start: it is possible to see down into it.
- Nothing lifted off goes back in. What was skimmed is discarded, not tipped back once the ladle is full.
Where it goes wrong The pot was allowed to boil, usually while something else was being attended to. Fat and protein emulsify into the liquid under agitation and cannot be lifted off afterwards, so the finished broth stays cloudy and greasy however patiently it is skimmed from then on.
Knife cuts: dice, julienne, bias 150 recipes
- Take any three pieces from anywhere in the pile: they match closely enough in every dimension that you would have to measure them to argue otherwise.
- The cut faces are flat and clean rather than ragged or crushed; leaves and herbs are cut through, not bruised, and the board carries no dark smear where they were.
- The stated size is the actual size, held against a rule or a known reference rather than called about right.
- Everything in the pile is the shape that was asked for: no wedges, no half pieces, and no offcuts swept in to avoid waste.
- They cook evenly, which is the entire point: at the end of cooking nothing is still raw and nothing has collapsed.
Where it goes wrong The knife was dull, or the vegetable was never squared off first, so the pieces vary: the small ones are mush by the time the large ones are cooked, and the dish has two textures where it wanted one.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Chardonnay (village Burgundy)
- 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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