CHICKEN SOUP

MOST STANDARD CHICKEN STOCKS ARE not flavorful enough for a robust chicken soup. They are fine if ladled into risotto, but we wanted a broth that really tastes like chicken. We knew that the time-consuming conventional method—simmering chicken parts and aromatics such as onions, carrots, and celery in water for at least three hours—was part of the problem. This method takes so long to extract flavor from the chicken that many cooks shortcut the process and end up with weak stock. We wanted to see if we could do better in less time.

We tried blanching a whole chicken (cooking in boiling water for several minutes) on the theory that blanching keeps the chicken from releasing foam during cooking and makes a clearer-tasting stock. The blanched chicken was then partially covered with water and placed in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water. Cooked this way, the chicken itself was never simmered, and the resulting broth was remarkably clear, refined, and full-flavored. The only problem: it took four hours for the broth to take on sufficient flavor. We also noted that our four-pound chicken was good for nothing but the garbage bin after being cooked for so long.

A number of recipes favor roasting chicken bones or parts and then using them to make stock. The theory at work here is that roasted parts will flavor stock in minutes, not hours. We gave it a try several times, roasting chicken backs, necks, and bones, with and without vegetables. We preferred the roasted stock with vegetables but nonetheless found the actual chicken flavor to be too tame.

At last we tried a method described by Edna Lewis in her book In Pursuit of Flavor (Knopf, 1988). She sautés a chicken that's been hacked into small pieces along with an onion until the chicken loses its raw color. The pot is then covered, and the chicken and onion cook, or "sweat," over low heat until they release their rich, flavorful juices, which takes about 20 minutes. Only at that point is the water added, and the broth is simmered for just 20 minutes longer.

We knew we were onto something as we smelled the chicken and onions sautéing. The finished broth confirmed what our noses had detected, tasting pleasantly sautéed, not boiled. But we still had some refining to do: for once, we had made too strong a broth.

We substituted chicken backs and wing tips for the whole chicken and used more water. The resulting broth was less intense, just the right strength to make a base for some of the best chicken soup we've ever tasted. We made the stock twice more—once without the onion and once with onion, celery, and carrot. The onion added a flavor dimension we liked; the extra vegetables neither added nor detracted from the final soup, so we left them out.

After much trial and error, we had a master recipe that delivered liquid gold in just 40 minutes. While this recipe requires more hands-on work (hacking up parts, browning an onion, then chicken parts), it is ready in a fraction of the time required to make stock by traditional methods.

Where can you find these otherwise mostly useless chicken parts? The Buffalo chicken wing fad has made wings more expensive than legs and thighs. For those who can find chicken backs, this is clearly an inexpensive way to make stock for soup. Our local grocery store usually sells them for almost nothing, but in many locations they may be hard to get.

Luckily, we found that relatively inexpensive whole legs make incredibly full-flavored broths for soup. In a side-by-side comparison of two stocks, one made from backs and the other from whole legs, we found the whole leg broth to be even more full-flavored than the all-bone stock. Just don't try to salvage the meat from the legs. After 5 minutes of sautéing, 20 minutes of sweating, and another 20 minutes of simmering, the meat is void of flavor.

If you are making a soup that needs some chicken meat, use a whole chicken, as directed in the recipe for Chicken Stock with Sautéed Breast Meat. The breast is removed, split into two pieces, sautéed briefly, and then added with the water to finish cooking. The rest of the bird—the legs, back, wings, and giblets—is sweated with the onions and discarded when the stock is done. The breast meat comes out of the pot perfectly cooked, ready to be skinned and shredded when cool. We particularly liked the tidiness of this method: one chicken yields one pot of soup.

One note about this method. We found it necessary to cut the chicken into pieces small enough to release their flavorful juices in a short period of time. A meat cleaver, a heavy-duty chef's knife, or a pair of heavy-duty kitchen shears makes the task fairly simple. Precision is not required. The point is to get the pieces small enough to release their flavorful juices in a short period of time.

To cut up a whole chicken, start by removing the whole legs and wings from the body; set them aside. Separate the back from the breast, then split the breast and set the halves aside. Hack the back crosswise into three or four pieces, then halve each of these pieces. Cut the wing at each joint to yield three pieces. Leave the wing tip whole, then halve each of the remaining joints. Because of their larger bones, the legs and thighs are the most difficult to cut. Start by splitting the leg and thigh at the joint, then hack each to yield three to four pieces.