How To Make Chicken Soup (2024)

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updated Aug 23, 2022

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This is a soup you can be proud of. No matter how many times you’ve made it before, a pot of this soup on your stove should (and will) result in a self-congratulatory fist pump. And if you’ve somehow made it this far in life without making chicken soup from scratch using a whole chicken, then prepare yourself for something truly special. Dinner is going to be amazing.

Don’t Be Scared of Simmering a Whole Chicken

I did not grow up in a household where we made chicken soup from scratch, so the idea of plunking a whole, raw chicken in a pot of water and letting it simmer felt equal parts mystifying and nerve-wracking.

Why the whole chicken? Why not just shred a few cooked chicken thighs, pour in some flavorful bone broth, and call it good? And do you really leave the skin on?

Leah Koenig, author of Modern Jewish Cooking, coached me through my first time making this soup, and I will be eternally grateful. She describes the perfect chicken soup as “clear goldene yoykh, or golden broth, as it is called in Yiddish.”

You only achieve this by slowly simmering the chicken — with the skin on — along with some vegetables until the chicken literally falls off the bone. Strain the broth, chop up the chicken and vegetables, return everything to the pot, and you have the best chicken soup in all the land.

Chicken skin is key to this whole endeavor, Koenig told me. I fretted that it would make the soup greasy and overly rich, but she insisted: “Keep the skin on to maximize your soup’s flavor. All of the savory, full-bodied oomph that you expect from a good chicken soup comes from the skin.”

Indeed, one sip of the finished broth and I was hooked. This soup was richer, more savory, and altogether more awesome than any chicken soup I’d ever made before. Koenig suggested skimming the fat off the top of the cooled soup if I felt the broth was too heavy (the fat solidifies on top), but I didn’t think it was necessary — the soup was perfect as it was.

A Word on Mushy Vegetables

Traditional versions of this soup call for simmering the root vegetables right along with the chicken so they can flavor the broth, and then eating them as part of the finished soup. Koenig told me, “Super-soft vegetables are definitely a hallmark of chicken soup,” but even so, she doesn’t like them to be too mushy. (And neither do I.)

To avoid this, Koenig recommends simmering the vegetables in large chunks, which still give flavor to the broth, but cook more slowly. When finishing the soup, just chop the large chunks into bite-sized pieces and return them to the soup.

I recommend taking this one step further and adding the vegetables just in the last hour of cooking. This way, you still get the flavor in the broth, but there’s less risk of completely overcooking the vegetables.

How Long to Simmer the Chicken

I found a wide range of cooking times in my deep-dive into chicken soup, from the 1 1/2-hour simmer Koenig gives in her book to as long as overnight in some of my thrift-store community cookbooks. Koenig recommends going by feel rather than the clock, and simmering until the chicken is tender and falling off the bones. Total simmering time will depend on the size of your chicken.

Keep the water going at a slow, steady simmer during cooking. Too vigorous and Koenig says you can end up with a thin-tasting broth. Too slow and it can take forever for your chicken to cook. Aim for a slow simmer where you see bubbles percolating regularly up through the liquid.

Floating Chickens and Other Concerns

Don’t worry if your chicken floats in the liquid as it cooks. Since the pot is partially covered, the top will cook just fine. Koenig also says that you can flip the chicken a few times during cooking if you’re concerned.

You’ll also notice some scummy foam collecting on the surface of the liquid in the first half hour or so of cooking. As the foam clumps together, skim it off with a wide, flat spoon — it’s not harmful, but you’ll make a better soup if you skim the foam away.

If you have a few extra minutes, you could also sear your chicken on all sides before adding the water. This will give your soup just one more layer of savory goodness, although Koenig says your soup will be incredibly flavorful either way.

When to Add the Salt

Wait to salt your soup until after you’ve shredded the chicken, chopped up the vegetables, and returned everything to the soup pot. At this point, stir in a teaspoon of salt at a time and taste the soup between each addition until it tastes good to you. Personally, I like between two and three teaspoons of salt for a whole pot of soup.

Serving the Finished Soup

Not for nothing is this soup is called “Jewish penicillin” — it’s rich enough to fortify both your spirits and your constitution, but not so much that it would upset a delicate stomach. Serve the soup or even just the broth all on its own, or make it into more of a meal with cooked egg noodles, rice, or matzo balls.

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