Chicken Broth with Dumplings (куриный бульон с клецками)

This is by far my favorite Russian soup.  It’s basically chicken and chicken broth, carrots, pepper, and dumplings (flour, egg, and milk).  It’s the simplest to make, and you can eat it as a stand-alone meal or as a side dish.

Ingredients

3 Lbs. Chicken (with Bones, Possibly Skin*)

1½ Tsp. Pepper Corns

4 Large Carrots

2 Cups Flour

2 Eggs

1 Cup Milk

Salt & Pepper

*If you prefer a fattier and more flavorful soup, you can boil the skin with all other chicken pieces to prepare the broth.  Otherwise, cut excess fat away and remove the skin.

In a large stock pot, bring 1½ to 2 gallons water to a boil.  Add some salt (about 1 Tsp.) and ½ Tsp. pepper corns, followed by the chicken.  You’ll want to keep the skin and meat for flavor.  Boil for about three hours, periodically removing any of the meat fat that may foam and collect at the top surface of the broth.

Clean, peel, and slice the carrots so they’re about ¼” thick.

Once the chicken has cooked, turn the flame off, remove the chicken, and strain the broth and return to the soup pot.  Add another ½ Tsp. fresh pepper corns and some more salt, if you deem necessary (taste it).

Once the chicken has cooled sufficiently to handle, remove the meat from the skin/bones.  Tease the meat apart in strips about ¼ wide.  Return to the soup pot and turn the heat back on.

Return the broth to heat and add the carrots.  Prepare the dough for dumplings by mixing two separate batches of 1 cup flour, 1 egg, and ½ cup milk in a bowl.  Use a fork to mix it and add flour or milk, as needed, until the consistency is that of sticky bread dough.  In other terms, it should be thick enough that it takes a little effort to pull the dough out of the bowl, but not so dry that it’s not sticky.

Once the broth is boiling, dip a small teaspoon into the oil floating in the soup, then use the edge of the spoon to pinch and remove from the bowl a small piece of dough (¼ x ¼ x 1”).  Dip the spoon into the soup and give a little shake.  If the dough is not too thin or sticky, the dumpling should fall off the spoon.  Continue making dumplings until you've used both batches of dough.

Cook the soup until the carrots are soft.  Serve hot with extra pepper on the side.  I personally think that unless you have to blow your nose at the end of the meal, you haven’t added enough pepper.  But that’s me.

I hope you enjoy my favorite soup.

JK