Whole Poached Chicken Soup with fennel, leek, carrots and other assorted vegetables. Photo by Nate Smith

Our life has become a little bit taken over by soup. I’m not complaining. It’s pretty good soup.

It started simply enough. A few years ago, my wife didn’t feel great, to put it mildly. As medical practitioner herself with a bunch of nutritional know-how, she knew it was time to double down on a broth- and soup-based diet. As someone who likes soup, I was happy to hop on board. Not long after, faced with my own middle-age health hurdles, it became apparent it was a good idea for me, too. We set out to make sure both of us had a quart of broth a day, plus at least one or two meals’ worth of soups.

It sounds like a lot of work, but it turns out to be easier than it seemed, and it’s been well worth the relatively modest effort. Soup is universal for a reason: It’s delicious and the health impacts have been real. My wife soon felt better, my health improved, we’ve definitely saved money while being more efficient with our proteins, and we’ve both found it easier to eat healthy knowing we have a hearty lunch ready to go.

Soup became simply part of the routine. I make at least one large pot of broth a week, one half of it going directly into a soup I make immediately, and the other into quart jars for cooling. We drink much of the broth on its own, and for each batch of broth and soup, there’s always enough for at least one dinner, several lunches and a few quarts for the freezer.

For someone who can overthink recipes and make things more complicated than needed (me), soup has been a great reminder that simpler is better. Even complex flavors are just a question of tossing a few different spices into the broth. Mostly what I’ve learned is that the best-tasting soup doesn’t try too hard, that the simple flavors of a fresh broth, a pile of vibrant veggies, and an otherwise unadorned protein is all you need.

While I make all kinds of soups, both meat-based and vegetable-based, there’s one foundational broth and soup combination that does the heavy lifting on a week-to-week basis – whole poached chicken broth and soup. It produces a huge quantity of rich, delicious chicken broth, both for a soup and for extra. At the same time, you get a pile of tender, moist chicken perfect for soup or any other recipe. Add veggies of your choice, a little pasta or rice if you like, and you have as good a soup as you’ll find in most takeout shops for a fraction of the price.

Now that I’ve gotten into the routine, I find it deeply satisfying to make my soup for the week. It feels kind of magical every time a whole chicken and a pile of veggies turns into a big pot of soup and a stack of steaming, broth-filled jars cooling on the counter. I commune with generations of cooks as I sip the broth, knowing there’s little that I’m doing differently than humans have done over a pot of hot water for millennia. More importantly, much like those cooks through the ages, I get the satisfaction that my people are eating healthy, delicious soup out there in the world, even on days I didn’t spend any time in the kitchen.

Whole Poached Chicken Broth and Soup. Soup for now and broth for later. Photo by Nate Smith

Whole Poached Chicken Broth and Soup

I’m a huge fan of Tide Mill organic chicken. I use Gryffon Ridge Panch Poron in the poached chicken broth. It’s a Bangali whole spice blend that’s a great all-purpose blend for stocks.

Step 1 – Poached Chicken Broth

1 whole chicken, without giblets
2-3 onions, roughly chopped
Trimmings (stalks) from 1 fennel bulb – save the tender parts for the soup
4-5 carrots, roughly chopped
3-4 celery stalks, roughly chopped
Couple inches ginger root, sliced
5 garlic cloves, peeled and roughly chopped
5 strips lemon peel
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
1 tablespoon Gryffon Ridge Panch Poron
1½ teaspoons coriander seed
4 large star anise
3 bay leaves
1 dried New Mexican or Ancho chili, seeds removed
One de-seeded jalapeno chili pepper
Handful fresh parsley
2 teaspoons salt

Put everything in a 16-quart stock pot. Cover with water, fill the pot at least to its handles. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Lower the heat. Keep it on a low simmer for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Remove the chicken to a baking pan to cool; use tongs and a slotted spoon as it will want to fall apart (which is OK!). Once the chicken has cooled a bit, remove the bones and skin, returning them to the broth. Simmer the broth for another few hours. Season to taste, adding more salt if needed.

Strain the broth, first through a colander, then a mesh screen. Save about half the broth for another time. Reserve half for Amazing Chicken Soup.

Step 2 – Amazing Chicken Soup

4 – 6 quarts fresh Poached Chicken Broth
Reserved meat from 1 poached chicken
2 leek hearts, sliced thinly
1 fennel bulb, sliced thinly
2 large carrots, chopped
1 bunch broccoli rabe, chopped
½ head Napa cabbage, shredded finely
1 cup fresh or frozen green peas
Literally whatever other vegetable you’d like to add, chopped
½ teaspoon curry powder
Salt and pepper, to taste

Combine everything in a pot. Bring to a simmer and cook until the veggies are just softening.

It’s good, and more of a meal, served over rotini or a similar bite-sized pasta, cooked separately.

But importantly, just about any combination of your broth, the poached chicken and a bunch of vegetables will be great and will fill your fridge with great meals for on the go. Play around with combos and join the soup life!

Courtesy of Nate Smith

MEET THE COOK: NATE SMITH

I’m a lifelong home cook and explorer of foods, from as young as I can remember. I’m from Maine but not native, having moved here as a baby from, ugh, Connecticut. I’m a proud Portlander, growing up on Cliff Island, then to the Deering area, with a yearlong stopover on lower High Street. For college and much of the first part of my professional career, I moved away, living in the San Francisco area for most of the time post-college. The city opened my eyes to the diversity of foods.

Along the way, I’ve always been the one preparing meals. First for myself, filled with weekend-long cooking projects and exotic ingredients, like learning how to braise an octopus upon returning from a trip to Spain (verdict: visit Spain more). Then cooking for a family and balancing that against a sometimes demanding professional career in technology and marketing.

I’ve always been a cook, not a foodie. Not that I don’t enjoy fine dining – our dinner at the Lost Kitchen stands as one of my favorite life experiences – but I would rather know how to make the perfect quick pickle than see it artfully arranged on a plate next to my fish. I live in Pownal now and a recent second marriage to an acupuncturist and Chinese medicine practitioner has brought a whole new level of nutritional and herbal medicinal knowledge. Now my constant quest is how to create nourishing, delicious food at a volume to keep us all fed, all the time. While working full time.