You’ll have to start in the spring. Don’t ask me why, ask the green onions why they shoot up with the sun streaming through my bedroom window. Ask the chickens my mother raises why they rest in their coop all winter, meat growing tender with each passing month. Ask the food bank down the road why it gives out buckets of carrots and potatoes all spring long. This recipe is best for the spring: light and full of color.
Ingredients:
- The bones of one chicken
- The meat of one chicken, preferably white, shredded
- Green onions, one handful, cut into ¼ inch pieces
- Carrots, as many as you like, cut into ½ inch pieces
- Golden potatoes, about 4, cut into ½ inch pieces
- Optional: one can garbanzo beans
- One yellow onion
- Garlic, a lot, miced
- Spices
- Olive oil, enough to cover the bottom of your pot
- Water, approximately 5 cups
- Red grapes, one bag
Recipe:
Start making the soup two or three hours before you might be hungry. Be prepared for your roommates to wander in and out of the kitchen the entire time. They will ask how your day went and you’ll tell them how your mother will not stop calling you. She leaves long voicemails inquiring about every detail of your life- how your classes are going, if you ate dinner, what you ate for dinner, if you’ve made friends, if you’ve finally gotten a job or not. You resolve to call her back on the walk home from class, but by the time class is over, you’re already home chopping onions. You’ll call tomorrow.
One of your roommates will ask “Is dinner ready?” at least five times. Wash the grapes; set them out for her. She will pretend not to notice, but she will stuff them in her mouth like a greedy raccoon when your back is turned. You used to ask if she was hungry, but now you just offer food.
Now that she’s been placated, you can start the soup. First, open the bagged chicken carcass your mother stuffed in your backpack when you visited her this weekend. You saw her do it this time, but she has slipped food in without you noticing before, forgotten to tell you. There was a horrible moment in statistics when you reached for a binder and an unknown bag tumbled out in class. It ripped, spilling carrot and bones and who knows what else between desks. The smell lingered in the classroom for days. You sat in the back of the room for the rest of the semester.
Separate the meat from bones. Try not to grimace at the feeling of oily meat squishing between your fingers, cartilage sliding itself beneath your nails. Hear your mother’s voice: “Samira, it’s just food. Be grateful. Don’t make that face.”
Separate the dark meat from white meat if you’d like. Prepare your broth by boiling the bones, cartilage, and any discarded meat in a medium pot1. If you have vegetable scraps, let them soften in the pot. The hot water will draw out their nutrients and flavor. Let the mixture cook until the water has turned oily and opaque. Strain the liquid into a large pot. The remains have no use except for the trash or compost.
Here is a trick: grate your onion. Chopping them makes the fumes go everywhere and irritates your eyes, and produces relatively large chunks. Grating on them largely reduces the potential for crying over onions. It turns onions into a mixture of pulp and liquid which will saute perfectly, and won’t be chunky in your soup.
When the onions are translucent, add garlic. Cook until fragrant, then add spices. My spice tin is a reminder of my grandmother, a replica of her metal spice box, purchased by her on a rare trip to India. It holds nearly every spice I use in this soup, but you might not have the same spices. It doesn’t particularly matter what type of spices you use so long as you use plenty and their flavors go together.
Here are my favorites:
- Cumin seeds – flavorful, deep, slightly nutty and spicy
- Merchu – an Indian spice that is somewhat similar to chili powder. What’s the point in making soup if it won’t burn your throat on the way down?
- Cholula hot sauce – not exactly a spice, but necessary to achieving optimal spiciness
- Giru – an Indian spice with a light but complex flavor. Adds a delicious scent and flavor to cooked food.
- Salt
- Tumeric – a bright orange-yellow Indian spice. Slightly acidic or bitter taste, but great health benefits. Makes food a bright, inviting color. Warning: will stain clothing and counters!
- Ketchup – another not-spice, but it’s a great way to soften the turmeric’s sharpness and add more complexity to the soup. You only need a few tablespoons.
Season liberally. Add the potatoes and let cook until almost tender. They take much longer than carrots to soften. Then, add carrots, any other vegetables you might want, and the chicken. Cook until tender. Save the green onions for toppings- you don’t want them to wilt and lose their bright color and crunch.
Yell “Soup’s ready!” if your roommates haven’t already smelled the soup and wandered into the kitchen. Ladle it into big, wide bowls. Let your roommates sprinkle on extra green onions. Text your mother a picture of the soup and dial her number.
1 I forgot to mention, but you need two pots for this soup. At least, you should use two. One for bones and scraps, one to saute onions and garlic in oil while you wait. If you are patient, you can just use one. But I am not, so I use two.
Alina Kroll is an Oregon-based writer and editor. Her works are typically defined by deeply introspective narrators who are occasionally drawn towards the morbid or unsettling circumstances that surround their lives. Kroll is particularly interested in making unusual experiences feel familiar by creating characters who, although strange, also feel vivid and believable. You can find several of her published works in Prism.