Turns out soup is delicious if you use chicken broth

Turns out soup is delicious if you use chicken broth

Om nom nommmmmm.

So for those who don't know, I grew up vegetarian, which means up until this point I had never experienced the GLORIOUS DELICIOUSNESS that is chicken broth! Oh my god! And I thought basic soup was boring!


Ingredients

  • chicken broth cubes (no, seriously, chicken broth. It is leagues more delicious than vegetable broth)
  • carrots (like, maybe one or two or three?)
  • optionally something like garlic or onion or some other kind of alium (I don't like them too much, but my girlfriend does, and either way works really)
  • rice or pancakes (I precooked my rice and used store-bought pancakes. If you don't precook your rice you gotta figure out cooking times and proportions yourself, sorry.)
  • eggs (start with, say, one per person eating? And if it looks like too little add more)
  • olive oil (you could use some other oil, or butter, or any other fat really, but I like the extra flavour of the olive oil)
  • parsley (the fresh kind. Technically this is optional, but parsley is fucking delicious, and with just a little bit of parsley on top, you can delude yourself into believing any dish is healthy!)
  • you can add a sausage or five if you want (I have no idea what the different sausages are called in meatland. You want the kind of sausage that you could technically eat without heating it up)
  • you can also add cheese if you want (most things are better with cheese)
  • you can eat this with bread if that's your jam, or not! (the rice/pancakes makes this filling enough that you can do without and still get a full meal out of it)

Appliances

  • stovetop (I mean you could probably use a microwave or a slow cooker or a rice cooker or even an oven for this, but I can't help you there)
  • a knife (for cutting carrots, parsley, and pancakes or alium if you're using either)
  • a peeler (optional. You can peel your carrots with a knife, I just like these more)
  • pot with lid (you can do without a lid in a pinch, but a lid is more energy-efficient)
  • electric kettle (not necessary. Very useful though.)
  • a cutting board (or at the very least some kind of surface for cutting things on. Don't be cruel to your flatmates, don't use a screechy plate)
  • some kind of utensil for stirring (ideally wood or plastic or silicone, if your pot is non-stick)
  • bowl for eating out of (unless you're planning on eating straight out of the pot)
  • ladle (not necessary, but useful if you're planning on not eating straight out of the pot. Serving yourself soup without one is a pain in the ass)
  • spoon for eating the soup with (you could probably do without and just drink it messily? But I don't recommend it)

How To

Dump some oil in the pan. Heat it up. Heat up some water in the kettle. Peel the carrots. Slice up the carrots and alium if you're using that. At some point you should probably have washed them, too.

Throw the carrots (and alium) in the oil. Panic because the oil was way too hot and it basically insta-fried the carrots. Pour the water on top. Shit, that didn't help.

N.B.: Do not pour water on hot oil. Not even if it's hot water.

Hide out in the hallway until the kitchen is making less scary noises. Peek back in. Congratulations, you didn't burn anything or get hot oil on all the walls! Now don't do that again, oh my god.

Throw in your cubes of broth at this stage. Follow the packaging for guidelines on how many you need for your amount of water. Stir it until the broth cubes are all broken up and the water is beginning to smell delicious.

At this point you can essentially turn the heat on low, put a lid on it, and forget about it. Unless you leave it for, say, 8 hours, nothing is probably gonna happen to it. Use this time to cut up the pancakes if you're using those, chop up the parsley, cry about the state of the kitchen, and try to do something about the state of the kitchen by doing the dishes.

... well, that only helped marginally. Give up. Put the rice (or the pancakes) in the pot. You wana put in enough rice that it's not just lonely little grains swimming in a great big ocean of broth, but that it's not so thick that it's more goop than soup.

(goop than soup, goop than soup, goop than soup, goop than soup)

This is the point where add the eggs. Now I hear that American eggs are special and actually carry salmonella, unlike most European eggs? But if you're in the US I'm assuming you know better than me how to deal with that. At any rate you smash open the eggs and pour the egg bits - not the shell bits, the egg bits - into the water. Best to do it over the edge of a spoon, I think? I didn't do that and it got clumpier than I wanted it to. Really what you want is the egg to be kind of stringy through the soup (not in texture, in look) rather than all in one lump. Stir it all up to try and rescue the egg. Succeed somewhat.

And now you're basically done! Serve yourself some of that delicious, delicious soup. Throw some parsley or sausage or cheese in your bowl as desired. You could probably also put sour cream in? Hmm, worth experimenting. Enjoy.

(Try not to eat more than three bowls of deliciousness. Fail. No regrets.)