Delicious and Simple Passover Chicken Soup and Meal

This chicken soup with kneidlach, matzah balls, was the most delicious and super easy to make soup.

Before the Passover Seder, my main cooking contribution was to bring two types of kneidlach, regular and vegan kneidlach. This time when I boiled the kneidlach I used Chicken Broth.

First I prepared the kneidlach mixture, since it's supposed to sit in the fridge for a couple of hours. Click Kneidlach.

Chicken broth is also, so simple to prepare. All I had to do was to boil the cleaned chicken until just cooked, not until crumbling and disintegrating in the liquid. Then I removed the chicken and refrigerated it.

When you're ready to make the kneidlach, boil the chicken stock and either roll the kneidel mush into balls, or just get two spoons ready to "drop" ball like pieces into the broth/stock.

While the broth/stock is boiling carefully drop/add the kneidlach. When all the "mush" is in the broth/stock, cover and lower the flame, so that it just simmers for about 40 minutes.

After they cool a bit, remove the kneidlach and refrigerate or freeze if you won't be using them for more than a few days. Or you can make a large quantity and just freeze some.

I brought them all to my daughter's for our family seder, but afterwards she gave me leftovers to take home. When serving at the seder, those who wanted kneidlach got them added to the soup she had made.

Yesterday I made a wonderful meal with the chicken and the stock and the kneidlach, plus my all time favorite oven-roasted vegetables.

To turn the stock/broth into a delicious chicken soup, I cut an onion, a couple of carrots,a parsley root and parsley leaves. I put them plus the kneidlach in the pot, added the stock and covered it. After the soup began to boil, I lowered the flame to simmer for about 40 minutes.

I carved the chicken and took two pieces, added some diced onion, seasoning and olive oil to another pot, covered and cooked on a low flame.

We had an amazingly delicious lunch. It was very easy to make. The soup was rich and didn't have a drop of salt.

Pre/Post Yom Kippur Meal

Since we have a rather empty nest, just my husband and myself, I don't need to cook as much as before when the house was full of kids and guests. And we still have lots of big pots.

Don't get me wrong; we do have guests, but not as many as in the past. Also, nowadays, my cooking experiments aim more for efficiency than impressive. That's why I decided to try a Pre/Post Yom Kippur Meal, serving (almost) exactly the same meal before and after the Yom Kippur 25 hour fast. Of course, this dish is perfect any time you want an easy hearty one-pot meal.

I don't have many real Jewish Food traditions, especially as pre/post fasts or Succot and Shavuot, which weren't at all celebrated by us. I didn't grow up with kreplach, which is what many Jewish families eat as Pre/Post Yom Kippur Meals.

For some strange reason, as I was trying to figure out what to serve Tuesday night before Yom Kippur, barley popped into my mind. The experts say we should have a complex carbohydrate as a main part of the pre-fast meal. I decided to cook up chicken with barley and vegetables, a one-pot meal, which can even be a soup.

Before the fast, I served it with a salad, and breaking the fast I heated up some ratatouille, I had in the fridge. I also served myself some of the liquid with a bit of whatever came along as a soup, while my husband had his chicken soup. It was delicious, satisfying and so easy to make and serve. I tried to calculate cooking exactly what we needed for the two meals. In the end there's some barley left over, which can be "recycled" into a new soup with added vegetables.

Ingredients:
chicken, I cut it into large serving size pieces
about a cup of barley
onion, cut
2 carrots, cut large
2 large squash, cut large
seasonings, paprika, black pepper, garlic, parsley, a pinch of salt
water, of course

Instructions:

1. add all ingredients to a large pot, leaving a good inch before top, so it won't boil over
2. bring to a strong boil and then turn down flame to simmer for an hour or so
3. Yes, that's it!

Perfect Chicken-Less Chicken Soup With Vegetables

This is the soup I made for the pre and post Yom Kippur fast meals. For those who aren't Jewish, Yom Kippur is the holiest day in the year, and observing it includes a 25 hour fast, from just before dusk until night the following day. There are many Jews who aren't otherwise observant, but they still fast. For example, yesterday, just minutes before the fast was to begin, one of Israel's top tennis players, Dudi Sela, forfeited a game at a major tournament.

This is a Chicken-Less Chicken Soup, because, although I did make the stock with a nice big chicken, you can't see any sign of that chicken in the soup itself.  That's because I first began making the soup the day before. I boiled up a chicken in water for just over half an hour. I checked to see if the chicken was fully cooked before removing it from the soup. I then refrigerated both the soup and the chicken separately.

The next morning I checked and saw that there was a thick layer of hard fat on the soup stock. I carefully spooned it off and then began making the soup. First I put about two-thirds 2/3 a cup of barley on the bottom of a pot. You can use more or less, depending on what you like. And as you can see, I also cut up an onion for the soup. Then I poured the fatless stock onto the barley and onions and cooked it until the barley was swollen.

Once the barely seemed cooked, I added parsley root, carrots, mushrooms and parsley leaves to the soup.

If you think it needs more water, then add to the cooking soup. I did. Just before turning off the flame, I seasoned with a bit of coarse salt and pepper. Of course you can use different vegetables, though I do consider onions and carrots necessities.

Here's my bowl of soup from the pre-Yom Kippur meal. It was very easy to make.

Enjoy, and tell me what you did with this basic recipe, thanks.

Food, Family and...

Yes, I'm back blogging. The sinks, both meat and dairy, are over-flowing with dishes, pots etc. My son is, G-d willing, on his way back to Jerusalem and work. My daughter's trying to pack, and hers are a bissel over-tired.

Last night's Passover Seder went well; I think.

I was in charge of the food and I didn't hear any complaints. They wouldn't dare complain after all the work I did!

I made lots of chicken soup with "kneidelach," and after serving it at the seder and again today for lunch, it's almost gone. I made it in stages.

• First I boiled up the chicken in a large pot.
• Then I took out the chicken and cooled both separately in the fridge.
• The next day I took out the soup, skimmed off the fat, which had hardened.
• Then I added lots of vegetables, such as: onions, carrots, parsley roots and leaves and celery leaves.
• Since I was afraid that there wouldn't be enough room in the pot, I cooked up the kneidlach separately.
• I added just a drop of salt and pepper.

While we're talking food and family, meander to Carnival of the Recipes and Carnival of Family Life.

Enjoy!