Somehow, February 4 became National Homemade Soup Day. I can't find any information on how this came to pass, but more than one site agrees on it, so I'm going with it.
My favorite homemade soup is matzoh ball soup. I make it for my Passover seders, and I also usually make it for Chanukah, to go along with the latkes and my new favorite fried chicken recipe, which is an Italian Chanukah fried chicken.
When I make matzoh ball soup, it's almost always with chicken. I make my chicken stock from scratch. I save bones all year long, in addition to the cut-offs from carrots and celery and the skins from onions. Sometimes I'll actually go buy a parsnip or two to throw in there, but not often.
Once I made a fish stock for the matzoh ball soup, just to try it. Fish stock is much lighter than chicken stock, so instead of onions, the recipe called for shallots.
I make my matzoh balls from scratch also, including the super special "secret" ingredient for making the matzoh balls light and fluffy. I didn't get that from my family, since my mother wasn't particularly domestically inclined and I never knew her to make matzoh ball soup, or any soup from scratch. (The only Jewish food I vaguely recall her making was chopped liver.) No, I had to borrow another family's secret ingredient. But everyone I know has the same secret ingredient: seltzer water. There, I've said it. Now the secret is out. But if everyone has the same secret, was it really a secret?
I like small matzoh balls, about an inch in diameter. I find they cook better and actually benefit from the seltzer water, so they really are light and fluffy. I know that some people prefer big honking huge matzoh balls, the kind that one matzoh ball fills up the whole bowl. Nope, not for me. What's the point of the seltzer water if you get this dense, heavy medicine ball?
The soup itself, I don't put any meat or vegetables in it. It's just the stock and the matzoh balls.
And I am proud to say that everyone loves my matzoh ball soup. Even Jason (now the husband of my second former daughter-in-law), although it took three times of me bringing some over before he finally remembered to eat it before it went bad in the fridge. And then he decided he wanted to come over to have it the day it was made, just to enjoy the freshness. He liked it then also.
When I was still living in the San Francisco Bay area, my friend Anne always came for seder, and usually her daughter Karen did also. Karen is a vegetarian. After a couple of years of making the chicken version for everyone else and a small amount of vegetable stock for Karen, I got tired of making two versions and started doing the vegetarian version for everyone. My secret for that is lots of onions to give it good flavor. Karen actually asked me for the recipe to make it herself, which I took as a high compliment. But now that I'm not cooking for a vegetarian, it's back to chicken stock.
Image copyright Just Nora. Used under a Creative Commons license.
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