Tazria Recipe – My Mom’s Chicken Soup

Ronnie V. Fein

Ingredients:

1 large whole chicken

water

4 carrots, peeled

3 stalks celery, peeled

1 medium parsnip, peeled

1 large onion, left whole but peeled

small bunch of fresh dill

1 tablespoon salt, or salt to taste

6-8 whole black peppercorns

Instructions:

Wash the chicken inside and out, remove pinfeathers and hairs and place it in a soup pot. Pour enough water in the pot to cover the chicken by 1-inch. Bring the liquid to a boil, lower the heat and for the next several minutes, remove any scum that rises to the surface. Add the carrots, celery, parsnip, onion, dill, salt and peppercorns. Cover the pan partially and simmer the soup for 2-1/2 to 3 hours or until the chicken meat is very soft when pierced with the tip of a sharp knife. Pour the soup through a strainer or colander into a large bowl or a second pot. Set the chicken and vegetables aside. Remove the fat from the surface of the liquid with a spoon or fat-skimming tool or by patting paper towels on the surface. For best results, refrigerate the strained soup; when it is cold, the fat will rise to the surface and harden and you can scoop it off. (Refrigerate the vegetables and the chicken separately.) Serve the soup plain or with the vegetables (cut them up) and chicken (remove the meat from the bones and cut it up).

Makes 8 servings

In a “former life” Ronnie Fein was an attorney with a major Wall Street law firm and she gave it all up to be a food writer. She has been writing regular articles for newspapers and magazines for many years and has also written three cookbooks — the latest is: Hip Kosher. Her next book will be published in 2014, called The Modern Kosher Kitchen. While Ronnie does enjoy eating traditional Jewish food, her real mission is to make creative, modern kosher food as easy to cook as possible for all kosher home cooks. She dedicates her website, Kitchen Vignettes at www.ronniefein.com, to this mission, along with telling personal stories. She is also on Twitter at @ronnievfein and Pinterest, writes for several online newspapers and blogs including The Jewish Week and Joyofkosher.com.