THE JIM JONES CHICKEN SOUP PROJECT / AKA LUCKY PEACH’S “CONTRITION CHICKEN SOUP” RECIPE.
So after like a week of feeling like shit and trying to convince myself that I didn’t, I went to the doctor yesterday after a night of feeling like there was a vice around my throat, at which point, I was kindly told that I’ve had an upper respiratory infection for about a week, given a prescription for a Z-Pack, and sent on my way.
Since I’d become sick I’d intended on making the chicken soup recipe from the first issue of Momofuku’s quarterly, Lucky Peach - truly one of my favorite new print products to come out over the last few years if not my favorite - but remembered that the recipe omitted the amount of water needed to simmer the vegetables for the vegetable nage, or stock (the recipe goes by David Chang’s idea that it’s better to make separate stocks—chicken and vegetables, here—and then combine the different flavor elements to taste). Well, I went online to the Lucky Peach site and saw this:
ISSUE ONE RECIPE CORRECTIONS
In the chicken soup recipe, we neglect to mention that you should cover the vegetable nage ingredients with water before simmering. Don’t try to simmer without any water. Also, you only need 8 C of water for the broth, not 10. nd apologies to Harold McGee and to all of you who tried to make alkaline noodles with 4 tablespoons of baked soda. Please only use 4 teaspoons. Damnit. Finally, as an act of contrition, we’ve written a new recipe for chicken soup for you. Just email us. No hard feelings, right?
So I emailed the dummy email address, and it auto-replied with the link to the new recipe, which (SHH!) is right here.
CONTRITION CHICKEN SOUP
We fucked up a couple of the recipes in the first issue of Lucky Peach, and we feel terrible that our readers would go through the effort of cooking something we told them would work only to discover that it doesn’t. If you can find it in your hearts to trust us again, try this new recipe for simple chicken soup, straight out of the Momofuku test kitchen. Meehan thinks it’s even better—more chicken flavor, simpler method—than the one we misprinted in the magazine.
The major differences between the two recipes were:
1. The fact that Chang’s idea to make two different stocks was being dialed back on for one big pot.
2. The addition of ginger to the vegetable pile.
3. Calling for a larger chicken.
4. The call to “Let it go for 3 hours, skimming scum from the top obsessively.” The original recipe calls for the vegtable stock to work its magic for about an hour, and the chicken stock for an hour and a half. Also, nothing about the skimming. What’s this skimming buisness? I’d later find out.
5. The call to strain. “STRAIN LIKE CRAZY. Strain through a colander. Then a chinois. Then muslin. It’s a lot of effort—and you can skip the last two filters if you’re in a rush—but crystal clear chicken soup is baller.“
6. After three hours of simmering, the vegetables and chicken would be totally fucked, of an inedible consistency and drained of their flavor. I wanted some actual chicken meat in my goddamn chicken soup, if I was going to go through the trouble to make this shit.
So I decided on a compromise: Because (A) it was my first time making chicken soup—and stocks—and I wanted to learn what each stock tasted like individually, (B) because I wanted to chew on some goddamn chicken, and (C) because I didn’t want to spend three hours skimming obsessively when I’d only finishing shopping at both Whole Foods—where I had them chop up a lemon-pepper marinated bird, and tipped the dude nicely obviously—and M2M by 9:30 PM, I’d make a combination of the two recipes.
1. Two Different Stocks, with ginger and more vegetables.
2. Moderate skimming, obsessive straining.
3. But I’d resign the vegetables to garnish, and simmer them only a little less than the chicken would be simmering.
Along the way, I kept Henry on the phone for quite a bit, as he’s actually a chef and knew quite a bit about this soup business. He was also on the horn for my hysterical but somewhat disappointing tour through M2M, where I went to buy but couldn’t find the Schezuan Peppercorns, but did find the usukuchi soy sauce the original recipe called for. Also, some panda cookies, which were later cannibalized.
CUT TO: 12:30 AM or something. I started straining obsessively and couldn’t stop. I strained both stocks at least seven times. Most of the chicken had to be thrown out, but not all of it. The vegetables had lost all of their taste, and it yielded what looked like not enough stock. I was generally concerned that I was going all Col. Kurtz, and this soup was my Congo River, and my roommate was going to wake up in the morning to find me surrounded by chicken bits and panda cookies impaled on toothpicks as I covered my face in tribal markings made out of usukuchi and mushy carrots. At one point before all this, I sat down to NFL Countdown while the stock was still simmering, and watched the clip of Marshawn Lynch eating Skittles in slow motion (another blog post entirely) several times with the sound off until I convinced Henry to do the same, and we laughed about it for like fifteen minutes. Shit was getting dark.
But: The vegetable stock had a rich, awesome taste to it. Didn’t need any salt. And speaking of which: the chicken stock barely had salt in it. Whoa. I needed to get to work on that. And the two stocks combined? This could be good. I started combining the stocks and adding salt. The depth was there. My straining had paid off, and while it wasn’t a “baller” level of clear soup, it still had a nice, clean taste to it. I threw some chicken in a bowl, rolled it around in the usukuchi soy sauce, gave it a splash of the mirin rice vinegar wine, and cracked some pepper over it. Holy. Fuck. On account of that taste alone, I knew this could actually turn out well. I could’ve just eaten that. Seriously. With some vegetables as garnish, and some of the ramen topping it, the stocks now boiled and combined were added to it. And cooled off.
It was pretty great. JIM JONES, YOUR SOUP IS READY.
RECIPE GRADE: A
COOK GRADE: B+
RESULTS: A-
NOTES FOR NEXT TIME: I probably gave it a bit too much soy sauce on the second serving, but I’d definitely make it again, possibly even in one pot, except: I’d try to make some tare, or Japanese BBQ sauce to go with it, along with some extra vegetables that can be more than simply garnish. Also, I’d find those fucking peppercorns. And I’d buy a goddamn chinois, because straining soup with cheesecloth isn’t easy, and fuck if we don’t go certifiably baller next time.
