Stocks and Soups

At the start of our stock unit we made our own chicken stock. It was a new experience for me and the rest of my group because we had to make the stock from scratch. We butchered the chicken and cut the vegetable and even made our own bouquet garni. For the bouquet garni we took fresh herbs and wrapped in cheesecloth then placed in the stock. The first soup we did in this unit was a traditional chicken tortilla soup. This soup had a base of a chicken stock. We added tomatoes, onion, garlic, salt and pepper, and a Chile pepper. When the ingredients we done cooking we used a food processor to puree the soup. We added shredded chicken to the pureed soup. The soup was topped with Monterey jack cheese and sour cream and added cilantro as garnish. The element that really tied the soup together was the tortilla strips that we deep fried and place on top of the soup to add some crunch. We had all of our materials cut and really beforehand which made the whole cooking process much easier. The team work within the group made things much easier as well. We were able to split up the tasks so that each person wasn’t carrying such a heavy load. Our group had some slight confusion when it came to the recipe. But when we read it over more carefully we worked a lot better. One trouble spot in this recipe was that our group wasn’t prepared with the recipe at the start of class; this took away from our cooking time. The next soup we did was a potato based soup. We used proportions to get the right amount of everything. We added scallion, which was a nourishing element of the dish, and leeks. The scallions and the leeks gave the soup a really developed flavor that blended very well together. The liquid in this soup was chicken stock. When all the ingredients we added we pureed the soup. This was a really good soup because we as a group picked all of our ingredients and it tasted really good. - Zoe I