My One-Ingredient Secret For The Absolute Best Chicken Soup

People who have chicken soup recipes will also typically have secret ingredients. Few other foodstuffs are mythologized to quite the degree of a good old chicken soup, whatever the unique recipe or proprietary preparation may be. It soothes as much as it nourishes, it signals care like little else, and there's even a whole darn self-help industry around the stuff. It all just seems even more meaningful to have a pinch of one thing or another that does not appear in every other bowl topping tables all over the world. And my own secret ingredient for punching up a standard chicken soup is turmeric.

From simple additions like miso to a splash of white wine, there are as many different ways to upgrade chicken soup as there are cloak-and-dagger inclusions. But for a fairly typical pot resembling something that might be served by a storybook grandma, an earthy burst of turmeric is just the thing to enliven the flavors of carrots, celery, and onions, or whatever your own secret ingredient may be. I am certainly not the first or only person to reach for the fragrant, colorful powder to brighten up those crisp, gray days that call for soup, but it is what gives mine a little more spiced warmth and near-prickly depth of flavor than the last one you had.

Once the mirepoix is made, I use store-bought chicken stock nine times out of 10. I have even been known to avail myself of the massive shortcut of a rotisserie chicken, which you can also use to make an easy broth. And you can incorporate a little turmeric regardless of how scratch-made your own preferred chicken soup roadmap appears.

Salt and pepper are, of course, compulsory, while garlic households will always want to toss in at least a few cloves. Ginger is always a winner, a few lemon squeezes are a zippy addition, and bay leaf believers may as well add a couple of those, too. Add the turmeric, your pièce de résistance, one teaspoon at a time, as a little goes, as they say, a long way. Egg noodles can cook right in the soup in the last few minutes on the stove so they stay decently firm, and some chopped, fresh green herbs on top as a final touch bring your comforting chicken soup to life.