Sasha's Kitchen: Matzo Ball Soup

We're having a little Matzo Ball Soup-Off here on A Kitchen In Brooklyn.  I love my mother's Matzo (also Spelled Matzoh) Ball Soup.  In my opinion, her soup is a panacea for healing everything from colds to grumpy moods.  I like my Matzo Ball Soup and chicken stock prepared a very specific way, but it seems like everyone like's their mom's version the best.   We have not one, but three Matzo Ball Soup recipes that we will share with you here on A Kitchen In Brooklyn.  Eric's Matzo Ball Soup Recipe can be found here on this site.  In addition, another contributor to this site in Seattle, Emily, will be sharing her Matzo Ball Soup Recipe in a future post.  So, with Passover (and Spring!) around the corner, it's time for a friendly "Soup Off."

My Matzo Ball Soup is prepared just the way my mother makes it, with plenty of Jewish momma's love and a homemade chicken stock prepared from a whole Kosher chicken.  I like a hearty Matzo Ball Soup all winter long, rather than appetizer style.  To prepare the soup as an appetizer, you would want to discard the chicken after preparing the chicken stock.  However, I never do that.  I always prepare the soup as a main course and shred quite a bit of the chicken and put it back into the soup.  I just can't let a good chicken go to waste, and in my opinion, the chicken pieces help complete the soup.

Sasha's Matzo Ball Chicken Soup (with thanks to my mom)
Water (enough to cover the chicken in the pot)
One 3-4 lb whole chicken
1 parsnip
small handful of parsley
1 onion, quartered
a couple of large handfuls of baby carrots
3 stalks of celery
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup matzo meal
4 eggs
1/4 cup canola oil
1/4 cup water (for the Matzo Balls)

The first step is to prepare the chicken stock.  Break up the chicken into a couple of pieces.  I used a whole Empire Chicken,  In my opinion, to make the perfect chicken stock, it's best to use a Kosher chicken for this recipe.  My mom actually lives around the block from a Kosher butcher in Rochester, New York that sells perfect small chickens just for making soup.

Cover the chicken with water in a large pot with the water an inch or two higher than the chicken.  Bring it to a boil.  Then simmer for 30 minutes, while skimming off the top every couple of minutes.  After a half an hour, add the parsley, parsnip, onion (does't have to be diced because it will be discarded from the stock later), carrots, celery and bay leaves to the pot.  Add a couple of pinches of salt.  Simmer (on low) for about two hours with the lid of the pot half on.  After about two hours, the stock should be yellowish in color and have the flavor of the chicken stock, plus all those vegetables and bay leaves that you added.  The salt is important here too, so make sure to add a couple good size pinches.

Use a strainer to strain the broth into another large pot.  Then, add the celery and carrots back in, but discard the onion, parsnip, bay leaves and parsley.  At this point, you can also remove the chicken when you strain, and discard the skin, and shred some of the chicken off the bones.  Add this shredded chicken back into the soup.

To prepare the Matzo Balls, combine one cup Matzo Meal with four eggs, 1/4 cup of water and 1/4 cup of Canola Oil.  Mix well and refrigerate covered for about half an hour.  Form into 11 or 12 Matzo Balls, just a bit larger than golf balls.  Don't make them too small, or they will be hard.  However, don't make them too large, because they will expand when added to the pot.  Bring the chicken soup to a boil and add the Matzo Balls.  Then reduce to a simmer for about 20 -30 minutes.  Serve, and season with salt and pepper to taste.

This soup makes enough to serve 4 to 5 people as main courses, which means plenty of leftovers!

Sasha's Kitchen: Matzo Ball Soup

Eric's Kitchen in Jersey City: Matzoh Ball Soup

While I might not be Jewish, I quickly realized the healing power of good, homemade Matzoh Ball soup while I was in college in Philly. Whenever I was sick, I'd order in from this Jewish Deli, Izzy & Zoe's on 40th street and get this nice big container of soup made with extra TLC and I'd always seem to feel a little bit better. It always had lots of spices and bits of deliciousness floating around which is what I strive for in my own version. My girlfriend Jenn moved in at the end of the summer and this flu season she got both the swine flu and the regular flu so I ended up making a couple of pots of matzoh ball soup to make her feel better and I feel like I'm honing in on a pretty solid recipe.

I make mine with:
1 Whole roasting chicken with the skin and giblets
1 bag of baby carrots (sliced)
1 Large vidalia onion, chopped
1 bunch of fresh parsley, chopped
1 bunch of leeks, chopped (or you can substitute celery which I don't like)
- salt, pepper and various other spices you have lying around
3-4 bay leaves
1 box of matzoh ball mix (you need a couple of eggs and oil for this which the box will tell you)
- extra chicken stock. I use either chicken broth or 'better than bouillon'
- a large soup pot filled with maybe a gallon of water? (I eyeball most things, apologies to people who measure things out precisely)

I personally think the key to any good soup is the stock and I like mine to taste homemade but I don't have the patience to sit around for the 4-6 hours that most recipes say it takes to make a stock. My shortcut involves chopping the chicken with a cleaver to split the bones and create small, manageable pieces (roughly half the size of a clenched fist). This is important as a lot of the flavor comes from the marrow of the bones. You season the meat and sauté it with a little olive oil for 5 minutes or so until it's slightly browned. You don't need it to be fully cooked as the next step is adding it to boiling water with all your veggies and spices. My girlfriend's mom taught me that fresh parsley has healing powers and is an important factor of the matzoh ball soup equation. I also add the giblets and the bay leaves which I remove later.

I let it cook for a couple of hours as it still does take a while and I taste the stock and add broth or bouillon until it tastes good. While that is cooking, start a second pot of boiling water to cook your matzoh balls. Matzoh balls are pretty simple to make and you can follow the recipe on the box for these. You just combine the mix with some oil and eggs and then let them cool in the fridge for 15 minutes or so. Then you lay out some foil or wax paper and roll them up. My girlfriend taught me that the most important thing to keep in mind is to not roll them too tightly! They are going to expand as well so they only need to be about the size of a chestnut (roughly 1-1.5 inches in diameter). Another thing to keep in mind is that you do not need to salt the water if you are adding them to your homemade chicken broth as they will be very salty... I've made this mistake before!

Keep them separate and add them when you heat up a bowl or small portion. When the chicken has cooked for a couple of hours and you've added enough bouillon or more chicken broth to make it delicious, you remove the meat and giblets. Let them cool for a few minutes and pull the meat off the bone and cut it or pull it into bite size pieces. Discard the bones, skin and giblets and add the pulled meat back to your soup. This should help you cope with any ailment or just keep you warm when it's chilly.

Eric's Kitchen in Jersey City: Matzoh Ball Soup