German Chicken Soup | Mutti’s Lovely Recipe #Food

This recipe today comes from my German mother-in-law. It's a nourishing delicious chicken soup, a clear broth style soup that's quite elegant and restrained. It's also a little unusual in that a delicate savory custard is sliced into small pieces and added at the end which is a nice little surprise as you eat it. I've made it three times in the last month for my postpartum daughter because it is nourishing. Now, all the food safety in Australia says that you shouldn't wash chicken anymore because the bacteria can spread so easy and really it's not necessary. So what I have here is a 1.3 kilo chicken. You can have a bigger chicken if you wish or slightly smaller. And I place that into a large pot. Then into the pot I put two liters Eight cups Australian of cold water and just lightly season it about a half a teaspoon or a teaspoon of salt. And because I'm going to be using parsley later, I just throw in a few stems, not many, maybe three or four, and I'll take this to the stove. And I bring it to the boil and once it comes to the boil I reduce the heat to low and place a lid on it. Now if your lid doesn't have a hole you can just put the lid on slightly ajar and what I'm going to do now is gently simmer that for about one and a half hours so it poaches and all that flavor is drawn out from the bones and also it may take longer than one and a half hours depending on the size of your chook. Now a lovely little addition to this soup and it's optional is an egg custard and I make that now so I can put it in the fridge and set it up firm. So simply into a bowl crack two eggs then add 125 mils of milk, a little pinch of salt and just a tiny pinch of nutmeg and whisk that together just until the egg yolks are dissolved where you can no longer see them. Now there's a few ways to cook this custard and my mother-in-law actually puts it in a plastic bag and puts it in a pot of water boiling water and cooks it that way. However I prefer the oven method so I lightly butter a glass dish or a ceramic dish and I pour the custard into it. And I put that inside another small dish. And then I pour some warm water, just tap warm water. into the dish to come about halfway up the sides of the glass dish and then I just lightly cover it with some baking paper or some alfoil and I put that in an oven of 140 degrees celsius with a fan or 160 conventional and that will take between 25 to 30 minutes. I just want it to set. Now before I put it in the oven I'll show you another way you can do it is just put the dish In a pan and fill it up with water, well, halfway, so it comes up halfway the side of the dish in here, and then you can cover it and then gently simmer it on the stove, probably for about 20 minutes as well. But the oven method is easy for me because it's set and forget. So the next thing I do is I prepare the soup vegetables and everything except for the parsley can go in at once. Now this recipe is all about restraint and to be honest that's not one of my strongest points but I'm getting better at it. Now just one carrot. And what you want to do is cut them into really little pieces. So everything in this soup should be about the same size. One stick of celery and to get it into the small dice, I just split it down the middle. And then chop it finely. Next up is one small leek. And these ones I bought already sort of peeled. And you know, leeks are notorious for having dirt in them. But how I like to wash them is I chop them first. And because I want to keep it nice and small dice, I quarter it and then dice it. Then I pop it in the colander. And give it a good rinse in the sink. Sometimes I feel these trimmed ones that you can buy like this have already been cleaned, but it doesn't hurt because a bit of dirt in this soup would probably spoil it. Then one small onion finely diced. And the last soup vegetable is a cauliflower. And you only want really little florets in this soup. So remove the core and sometimes it's easy just to cut it in half to do that. And this is probably the most tedious bit, but break it into florets, but into very small little florets. Oops, that's a custard. The custard is not at all ready, so I'll put it on for another 10 minutes, which will make it 30 minutes all up. Sometimes it's easy if you cut off the stem and then just pull off the little florets from that. I think that's enough cauliflower. So that was just like a medium cauliflower. It wasn't too large. I won't use all of that. And I'll just weigh this for you so I can tell you how much what I'm using today weighs. 400 grams. And I'll put that into the bowl with the other soup vegetables. And I'll save this cauliflower and all the stalks for dinner. Now, that's all the soup vegetables, but I do prepare a couple of other things. So when the stock is finished, it's really easy to put together. And that's ready. Carefully remove it from the hot water. And that is lovely and set. So what I'll do now is I'll just wait for it to come to room temperature then I'll pop it in the fridge and by the time everything else is ready that will be lovely and set and I can chop it into small pieces and this doesn't go into the very end for the last two minutes together with the parsley and the soup noodles. Now I usually use curly parsley because I like it better but they only had flat leaf parsley available and all I want All I want to do is finely chop that. And that's probably a good tablespoon or two tablespoons of finely chopped parsley. So the soup noodles my mother-in-law refers to are those beautiful tiny little soup noodles you can buy. They're pasta noodles from most supermarkets. However, they don't sell them gluten-free. If you're gluten-free like me, I've found the best way to substitute that And this is also a little bit tedious is just to break off tiny little bits of pasta. My mother-in-law doesn't add the raw pasta to the soup but she cooks it separately and what that does it prevents the soup from getting cloudy and it doesn't take long. That'll do, it's a third a cup. Now I'll cook it. A little bit of salt and then the pasta. And you really only want to cook this until al dente because it's going in the soup. And rinse them under cold water just to separate the strands so they don't stick together and stop the cooking process. And that's about all the prep I can do right now. So the chicken has been simmering away now for about 100 minutes, an hour 40. And I'm going to carefully remove the chicken and it will probably fall apart. When removing chicken, always let it run out first, not down your arm. And this is the pot that I'll be finishing cooking the soup in. My mother-in-law actually never says to do this but I just want to make sure I get the broth lovely and clear. So I'm just going to put a clean cotton tea towel over the fine mesh strainer and very carefully pour the stock through. And by using the cloth and the fine mesh strainer it ensures that the broth that is left is lovely and has no sediment in it. Now before I put this back on the stove I'm going to cut the chicken into pieces and this is where you need restraint so the legs don't get utilized but you know they're delicious like right now with a bit of salt on top they're beautiful or in a sandwich they don't get wasted. But for the soup my mother-in-law only uses she says the nice part of the chicken which Which is the white meat and not the skin or the wings. And you're probably thinking why use a whole chicken if I'm just going to use the breast? And the reason is it creates flavour. So basically we've made a very light chicken stock. Did your grandmother used to dry the wishbone and then make a wish with you? Mine did. So now chop it into small pieces. I am now to put it all together. So I'm just going to bring it back to a boil. But before I do that I'm going to taste this. Now I lightly salted it before but I want to see where the seasoning is at the moment. It has a lovely chicken flavour but it's crying out for seasoning. Now my mother-in-law says three bouillon stock cubes but I feel in Germany they're smaller so I add two, just two small ones or two teaspoons of chicken stock powder and I'm just using this lovely Australian brand actually. It's organic chicken stock powder. I'll have another taste. It can do with a bit more seasoning, so I'm adding another one. But you be the judge of that, you taste it. I would start with two and then taste it and see if it needs a third one. And when it comes back to a boil, just reduce the heat a bit and add the chicken to the soup, together with all the soup vegetables that I chopped earlier. And once it all comes back to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer it only for about 15 minutes, just until the vegetables are just cooked. And while the soup vegetables are cooking, I'm just going to slice up the custard. And that's just been in the fridge for an hour or so. Didn't all quite make it, doesn't matter. Even though I greased it. Now this is really delicate custard and that's how it's supposed to be. And what I'm going to do is just chop it into little cubes. They're a lovely little addition and I'll get this bit out as well. So make little cubes like that. So they have been simmering away now for 13 and a half minutes and I'm going to check the carrot. If that's cooked everything's cooked and the best way to test it is to taste it. And now is also a good time to taste it for seasoning. Lovely, but it does need a little bit of salt. And if you want to add pepper, I would add white pepper so it doesn't discolor the beautiful look of the soup. Give it a gentle stir. I'm just going to taste it for seasoning again. Oh, nearly there. Just a tiny bit more salt and a little bit more pepper. I add the pasta, the egg custard little bits, which will firm up a little bit. And the very last ingredient is the finely chopped parsley. As soon as it comes back to the boiling point, I'll put my timer on for two minutes. Done. Smells so good. And then a lovely bowlful and the broth is clear. And just like anything else, this will taste even better the next day. And you can finish it with a little bit more fresh parsley. I hope I've done this recipe justice today. Mike's mum is a wonderful cook and I love watching her cook because she cooks with intention. Even if it's just boiling potatoes they turn out fluffy and beautiful. And you know apart from anything else this delicious chicken soup is really great for the upcoming cold weather we're about to get in Australia. Hopefully I'll see you again soon and And thank you so much for watching.