generational shift

[adrian_turtle]

Last year, I bought something called a "soup sock," that isn't as silly as it sounds. It's a cheesecloth bag, big enough to hold an entire chicken. If you want to make chicken soup and strain it through cheesecloth for a clear broth, you don't need to pour the pot of soup through a strainer. You can just put the chicken in the cheesecloth bag before cooking it.

They include a recipe in the package, because of course they do. I've kept the recipe card because it IS silly, especially for something called "Mama's Old Fashioned Chicken Soup." It contains a whole chicken, 2 onions, and 2 tablespoons of fresh cracked pepper. So far, so good. It also contains 3 cups of diced celery, and 2 packets of sugar substitute.

It shouldn't feel so very peculiar that "Mama's Old-Fashioned" could refer to a Boomer or Gen-X woman who relies on artificial sweeteners (because she doesn't have a teaspoon of sugar in the house? Because she can't imagine using a half a cup less of celery?) But on the other paw, I know my grandmothers used saccharine tablets everywhere it was appropriate and some places it wasn't, and my mother preferred aspartame. I have cousins-in-law who are already mothers of college students, and they cooked with sucralose for decades, though generally the kind that can replace sugar cup-for-cup.

Comments

[kate_schaefer]

Huh. I've made chicken soup for close to fifty years now, and I have never, ever put any sweetener into the broth. I've never used a whole chicken, either; that's the job of chicken carcasses, saved in the freezer until it's broth-making time. I can see that a soup sock would work just as well for a carcass or two as for a whole chicken.

That is a lot of celery.

[kareina]

Perhaps that bag could be useful for applesauce or jam with apple in it, just toss in the apple chunks without peeling and after cooking press everything but the peels out of the bag?

I would so not try their "old fashioned" soup--they lost me on both the celery and the artificial sweetener, neither of which I use in my cooking. But then I don't think sugar belongs in a soup, either.

[pameladean]

I think the soup sock is rather clever.

I don't find celery bitter, but that much of it would just be monotonous. I'd replace a third of it with carrot and another third with potatoes. I don't think chicken soup generally has potatoes, but my family are potato fanatics.

P.

[lcohen]

i was going to say what kate said both about not using sweetener and not using the whole chicken, only the carcass. not being a much of a fan of celery, i would never use that much celery and yes, please, to onions and carrots. back when i could cook, i would just have a gallon zip lock bag in my freezer and stick whatever odds and ends i had after chopping veggies or herbs, and then i'd use those for stock, so it never turned out the same way twice.