Chicken Noodle Soup (Kuracia Polievka)
Ingredients: few carrots, parsley root, few small onions, one small chicken, oil
Prep Time: About 30 minutes
My grandma makes, hands-down, the best ever chicken noodle soup. Part of her secret are her hand-made noodles. The other part is the recipe, which is posted here. As you will see it’s quite simple.
The Slovak version of chicken [noodle] soup (kuracia or slepačia polievka) is bit different from the American kind. First, it is always clear and “brothy”. Second, Slovaks use slightly different ingredients. While celery is an integral part of the American version (or at least the canned version I buy in the supermarket), celery is not used in the Slovak chicken soup. Instead, we use parsley (petržlen). The root that is. While in America parsley is used almost exclusively for its leaves, in Slovakia it is used predominantly as a root vegetable. For those unfamiliar with parsley, it looks like a small carrot, but is white.
Besides parsley, you will also need carrots (mrkva). My cooking started on a bit interesting note. I prepared this soup at my grandma’s. She is now living in a house built in 1886 in which my great-grandmother (from the other side of the family) grew up. I spent many summers there as a kid. It’s customary for Czechs and Slovaks living in a city to keep a small cottage (chalupa) in a near-by village to escape to on the weekends. This house was our chalupa. I thought I knew the house inside-out, and hence I was quite surprised when grandma asked me to go to the cellar (komora) and bring the veggies. I did not think this house has a cellar. To my surprise, it does.
The cellar is located underneath the living room. It is a small dugout accessed by lifting up the carpets and then pulling on one of the wooden boards making the floor. Even more surprising was finding out that this hole was used by the partisans (guerrilla fighters) during World War II. During the War, Czechoslovakia was split up into two parts. The Czech Republic was annexed into the Third Reich but Slovakia became an independent state under a puppet government installed by Berlin. Local population opposed this, and a large homegrown opposition to the Nazi presence sprang up. These guerrilla fighters were known as partisans or partizáni. The center of the Slovak national uprising (Slovenské Národné Povstanie) was my hometown of Banská Bystrica, which now houses a large memorial dedicated to this historical event. Anyway, turns out that, just like in the movies, Nazis came by the house to look for partisans. It’s good they did not find them, as I am sure my great-grandparents (and thus my predecessors) would have been dealt with quite fast on the spot!
In the cellar, I found the largest carrot (mrkva) I have ever seen. Besides the carrot, you will need parsley (petržlen) and onion (cibuľa). You can also use parsley leaves (petržlenová vnať) and kohlrabi (kaleráb). Peel the root vegetables and the onion and fry for about 2 minutes on oil (olej).
Add a small chicken (kura) and top off the pot with water (voda)
Cover and let cook for a while. Once the soup starts boiling, lower the heat, otherwise the soup will end up muddy. Once the soup is done, i.e., the vegetables are getting soft, take a small strainer and scoop out the brown muck that formed on the surface. Also add salt (soľ) to taste. We used two of these small spoons.
Let the soup go through few more bubbles, so the salt has a chance to dissolve. Serve by placing cooked noodles in the bowl and then topping off with the soup. Enjoy! It goes great with the home baked flat bread and rolls.
Although there is no possibility that your grandma makes a better chicken noodle soup 🙂 I would still like to read about your family recipe. Please post the recipe for your favorite chicken noodle soup and share with others. Thanks!
Dear Lubos,
Interesting tidbit about the “Inglorious Bastards” scene! Totally badass.
Your friend,
Nicole
Parsley root is not parsnips.
Parsnips are relatives of parsley. Parsley has strong flavor, parsnips has bitter flavor.
In soup parsley taste better than parsnips.
Thank you for explaining the difference betweenn parsley root and parsnips. I was wondering if they were the same, and then voila! There was your email explaining the difference. Thank you!
Ahoj Lubos,
“Parsley root” is labeled as parsnip in the markets. I’ve always wondered what parsnips were exactly, thanks for leading me to this discovery and thanks for all the wonderful recipes!
Amanda
OK here I go, I, and my family, made and still making “Kuraciu Polievku” a very similar way as you described. And yes, there is no good chicken soup without “parsley root”.
Here are a few differences (not significant)
We always put a couple of garlic cloves in, and (this is my addition ) – a couple of dried hot peppers in.
Now there is a difference (or not, as I make it both ways)
There is a “clear version” of Chicken soup and a “whole hearty” version.
In “clean version”, you strain all veggies, and meat, and start basically with chicken broth, You make home made noodles in a form of thin sliced noodles, as you described in that other noodle recipe (looking like “angel hairs” in supermarket), or “krupičky”, really fine small size (kind of barley size) pasta, and then you add some of the cooked veggies (carrot mostly) Chicken you can use to bake with mashed potatoes to make an additional dish
In the “whole hearty” version you do the same, except, you put back into soup a small cut up pieces of chicken, and in this case it works better with “krupičky”
Both are good 🙂
Anna,
You are 100% right. Good chicken soup must have a few different root vegetables.
Has to simmer for at least 2 hours and finished product is golden, not white.
When done right, it is a medicine not a food.
LOL.
The recipes above miss a lot of ingredienst. Here, in Bratislava, we prepare really excellent home made chicken soup.
Ingredients (for 5liter pot):
8 big carrots, 4 parsley roots, celery (better is to use wild celery, it is green soft and mild), one piece of kohlrabi, few small coleworts, onion, herbs (rosemary and green leaves of parsley- a lot, tied in a bunch, we call it “grunzeug” from german, half of a chicken, salt, blackpepper, small chilli pepper.
We put everything to the pot, add cold water to cover all the vegetables and meat, naw we put the salt in it. We cover the pot with a lid and on low heat cook the soup cca TWO hours. 30 minutes is not enough to get really strong soup with full flavour. We serve it with noodles or with small parsley dumplings
Sorry to say, but if you skim all foam from soup you taking all best nutritions out of it.
Also flavor is not the same.
Nice site!
My mother is from Dolna Krupa. She uses parsley root (petržl) AND whole allspice in her chicken soup. Petržl is properly called Hamburg Parsley. Its flavor is much more delicate than parsnip, to which it is related.
Our recipe is a bit different. Use a 3-4 lb whole chicken (or legs/parts). Put it in a pot, cover with cold water, bring to a quick boil. Once all the foam comes up, strain the whole lot, rinse off the meat, clean up the pot, and then start over (make sure the water level barely covers the chicken, for best flavor). This gives you a clearer broth and there’s less skimming to do.
Once it comes to a boil, turn it to simmer. Skim any remaing bits as needed.
Add (cut up or whole, your choice):
Carrot, petržl (with leaves), celery, leek or onion, and 4 or 5 whole allspice, plus a few peppercorns, and salt.
Simmer for a hour & a half to 2 hours.
Take out the chicken to cool.
Serving options:
1.Serve with fine noodles(rezance)and prinkle some of the cooked carrot cut up in small pieces into each bowl for color.
2.If you cut up the veggies in small pieces before putting them in the soup, you can simply serve them in the light broth, which makes for a simple variation.
Also, you can further cook the cooled chicken meat with onion, salt, pepper and paprika in two ways:
1. Debone and shred the meat, then add to a saucepan with sautéed diced onion, season with generous amounts of paprika, pepper and garlic salt
2. Season chicken pieces with paprika, pepper, garlic salt, bake at 325F for 20-30 mins till crispy on top.
Yum!
Thanks Luci! I’ll try your recipe.
there is a lot to like about chicken soup.
Now, anybody of you are making a soup from beef bones? I like it a lot, especially finishing it with “liver dumplings”.
If anybody is interested, I’ll post a recipe, as I am making it right now 🙂
Hi Miro,
I would be very interested in your beef soup recipe using beef bones. My Mother made me Beef Soup all the time as child. She never had any recipes written down. I crave the good Slovak Beef and Chicken Soups but have never been able to make them. Maybe your recipe will help me.
Thanks
Shirley
Shirley, don’t know about Miro’s recipe, but I just made soup using rabbit bones. I used the same recipe as above, when making chicken soup.
Shirley, here is how I make beef soup using beef bones.
Ingredients:
– 1 -1/2 lb of beef soup bones. You can buy them in most grocery stores and they are cheep. They will have some meat on them but what’s more important they will have a good marrow in the bones.
– about two carrots and one parsley root
– medium sized onion and a couple of garlic cloves
-salt, whole black peppercorns, ehh, about 6 -8 of them
Prep:
– cover the bones with water, about 3 -5 quarts
– boil for about an hour
– add all veggies and boil slowly for about another 1 1/2 hour
– strain the soup so you would pretty much get a good clear beef broth
– take bones out of the strainer and discard the rest. I love to put bones on a plate with marrow still in it, get the marrow out put some mustard on it, and eat it with a fresh bread
– make liver dumplings (I would not have it any other way), put some chopped parley in it and there you have it
Liver dumplings:
– get some beef or veal liver. I like it and thus I use more than other folks, but about /4 to 1/2 lb would do (depending how big is your pot and how much bones you used.)
– one small onion, 1 egg , 5 table spoons of bread crumbs, 2 tablespoons of flour. 1 or 2 garlic cloves, black pepper , salt, marjoram. It really depends on you how much spicy etc. you want it
– Put livers into blender and mix it well, add shredded onion, crushed garlic, seasonings, bread crumbs, flour, and give it a spin to blend it all.
– let it rest for about 20 minutes, then form a small dumplings (like you would do with halusky) and let it boil in a soup until they raise to a surface
Miro, this sounds exactly like my grandma’s soup recipe above, except that she doesn’t use garlic. And I used the same ingredients when making the rabbit soup. So I guess the meat part can be replaced by whatever you have at hand, the part that stays constant are the carrots, parsley and onions (and maybe garlic). Grandma also sometimes put kohlrabi into the soup. I love it (used to eat it raw) but it’s very rarely available in my grocery store.
That’s true, when making a soup from bones and some meat, all recipes use the same or very similar approach. There may be a variation in how “thick” or “clear” the soup is (except for soups like kapustnica or goulash soup). Yes in Slovakia we prefer “clear soup”, and then what filling you use, e.g., fine noodles, soup dumplings, “rajbanicky”, etc.
Vegetable soups and some specialty soup (like cold summer soups) is different story.
Anyway, soups are good, and inseparable part of Slovak cuisine. In the US dinner usually starts with salad, in Slovakia it starts with soup. Based on nutrition approaches, soup is better, as it’ll fill you up and you don’t need to eat a big portions of main meal.
I would love the recipe for the liver dumplings. Love this soup. I was raised eating it.
Barbara
My mother-in-law puts liver dumplings in the chicken soup with Christmas dinner.
I live in the deep south. Mama’s recipe was
one chopped onion one chopped carrot salt and pepper one chicken cut into 8 pieces. Saute vegetables in butter or olive oil 2=3 minutes.
Add chicken cover with water bring to a boil.
Turn down to simmer. Cook until chicken is done. The noodles were simply egg salt and flour rolled thin and cut into thin strips and poached and drained and put into soup. The chicken and stock were simmered a little while longer. It was served sprinkled with finely minced Italian parsley.
My grandmother came from Slovakia in 1915. She made the best chicken noodle soup that I ever tasted. She would stuff her chicken with onion,carrots, and a little garlic and parsley. She would then wrap her chicken in cheese cloth and cooked until tender. When tender,she would remove the chicken and vegetables and put in her very finely cut homemade noodles, When serving she would put finely chopped homegrown parsley on top.Browned chicken and served separately. Best soup ever.
Hi Betty. I have never heard of chicken being stuffed before cooking for soup. That’s pretty neat, thank you for sharing! Have you tried cooking soup like that yourself?
That looks good. It’s a neat trick wrapping a chicken and veggies in a cheese cloth. It eliminates a need for straining and removing chicken from broth that can be a messy process.
I have to try it soon. Thanks!
Oh boy, that is exactly the same way my baba made it! I remember the taste of parsley…and I never could duplicate it in my soup. Now I know to use the parsley earlier and use the cheese cloth. That explains a lot! My baba used either home made noodles or rice. It still comes to mind as I think of it. She lived in a small house with only cold running water. The toilet was down in the basement…which had a hard packed dirt floor. There was no shower, in order to bath she heated up water on the stove and used a large tin bathing pan or pot that she set up on the kitchen floor. It took a bit of time to heat up enough water since when she put it in the tin container it would start to cool off. This is the same way she took baths all her life, as did my mother when she was young. No matter how I try I can’t seem to duplicate the taste of her soup. Now I may be able to!
Tim
Lubos,
This chicken noodle soup recipe from your grand mother so reminds me of the rustic cooking that seems to be lost by time and generations. Simple, yet so fulfilling, nothing beats a soup made from the broth of fresh chickens.
You mention that celery is used in many American perparations, yet I must tell you that the influcence may stem from the French preparation known as a Mirepoix, which is onions, celery, and carrots.
Bon appetit!
CCR
=:~)
Thank you for your comment, Ryan! And I totally agree. I am actually hoping to bring this old-school type of cooking back with this website. To me, Slovak cooking is not so much about the ingredients, it is about the process. I think cooking got tainted by all these gadgets that are appearing everywhere. Now it seems you must have a dedicated contraption to slice avocados, another one to cut lemons, special pot just to make tea, etc… What I really enjoy about my grandma’s cooking is watching her make the most delicious dishes using nothing more than some two pots, and an old-school wood burning stove, which doesn’t even have much of a temperature control.
You are right about the celery, it is definitely a popular ingredient in French / Cajun cooking.
I love this recipe. I made the noodles as instructed and agree that this adds to the delicious flavor. I also roasted the chicken afterwards with potatoes
Lubos, I made your chicken soup today and it was great. I have never tried parsley root before and I think it will become a regular addition to my soups. I also like the broth clear. But it has so much nutrients and goodness as well as flavor that it is truly like medicine. My wife is coming down with a cold as is my son so I made the soup along with Rozky and home made noodles. It is cold, rainy and now it has started snowing again. So the soup, rolls and noodles were just perfect for today. Thanks so much once again for this site and for sharing your recipes. I love the idea of everyone trading recipes and helping each other out. I have learned a few things in just a few days. Dakujem!
Tim
My mom would make it with a dumpling.i agree with Rusty. If I had a bad cold. Two bowls of soup with lots of red pepper flakes. Go under the blankets and sweat it out. Little tea with honey. A day or so after you were like a million bucks.
It’s great to hear all these recipes. I would watch my great Aunt Sue, twin daughter of Slovak immigrants make beef soup. Besides the beef bones, celery, carrots, parsley and onions, she would add a half a head of cabbage, and add potatoes and can of whole tomatoes. My grandfather would enjoy this soup by adding a half a teaspoon of Koschiosko brown mustard. Its great on the meat and vegetables. I am making it right now!
My mother was Slovak and immigrated to the U.S. at two years old with her aunt and uncle (her mother had died). I adored her soup when I was growing up and just made some today! I use a beef knuckle bone, a little stew meat (because “modern” soup bones are scraped clean of any meat), a large onion, 4 or 5 stalks of celery, lots of carrots (because I love them!), and a half head of cabbage. I use a large pot. It is actually a pressure canner but I don’t use the pressure cooking. It is just the largest pot that I have. I use a lid from another pan that fits. I put the bones in the pot and fill with lots of water, leaving only enough room for the vegetables that will be added later. Bring the water to a boil. There will be lots of foam come to the top. Skim this off repeatedly until the foaming pretty much stops. Add the vegetables. Bring up heat again then reduce to a simmer and let cook, covered, on low heat, for 3 hours. I add a small can of tomato sauce to the broth to add a bit of richness although my mother never made it this way until late in her life. She claimed that she always added tomato sauce, but my sisters and I agree that none of us learned to make it this way. It is a good addition, though. We always just ate the broth over noodles with maybe a little carrot but my husband eats all of the vegetables with the broth and noodles. Oh…important note: it is always better the second day!
Growing up, Grandma made the most delicious chicken noodle soup but never taught us how to make it. My MIL, taught me her version of soup, and it is very similar to yours. I use a whole chicken, including neck bones, carrots, celery, an onion, salt and pepper, turnip or kolorabi (whatever I can get at the time), parsley, potato, and parsnip. After the initial boil, I turn down the heat to a simmer and skim the foam off. I make sure there is a ripple going through so it is still cooking well. I don’t stir it, but I still skim it and keep an eye on it. I cook it as long as I can. Usually 4 to 6 hours and sometimes longer. It ends up being a nice bone broth and the chicken falls apart. Then I strain the soup and put the meat and veggies on one plate and the soup in bowls and we eat! It doesn’t have to cook that long, but it has such great, deep flavor that I always leave it that long. I use the same ingredients for beef soup don’t know what I use a beef roast and a couple of good sized meaty beef bones that I put in the oven for 30 minutes to brown first. The chicken soup is still missing a spice that Grandma put in her soup. I don’t know what it is, but it was really good!
Grandma’s soup had a different type of flavor than mine, it was completely her own, and I miss it!
My Gramma was from Yugoslavia and is of German descent. She made her chicken soup with potatoes, carrots, parsnip and parsley root and a fresh butchered chicken. When the veggies were done, she removed them and the chicken and then added the noodles. This way people could add what they wanted to there soup. I myself liked the veggies and no chicken. It was awesome and we had this before almost every Sunday meal.
When using onion in chicken soup try to keep the skin on (depends on the state of the onion of course) this will add a nice golden colour to the broth. One other thing: if you lucky enough to have a genuine farmyard freerange bird then cook until the meat is tender (1.5-2 hours in my view). Then remove the bird, let it cool and remove the meat, then return the carcass for another hour or so. Involved? Yes, but it is worth it. I like to add very thin slices of garlic right at the end of the cooking process along with fresh herbs. There is nothing better than chicken soup and I see that many agree 🙂 Kristina is right, it is better the next day!
Does anyone have the recipe for the thin noodles?
Raised on a farm, mom always had chickens. The older ones were always used for soup. Get it? The best Slovak soup is made from older fatty chicken. The grease may not be healthy, but my aunt lived till 96. I eat it twice a month and ill be 104. Just kidding
Best soup from the chicken that you can get from the farmer. Not fast raised chicken.
If you are buying legs for chicken soup make sure that bones are clear not bloody.
Diky!
Oma’s chicken noodle soup had onion, large chunks of carrot, parsnip, and celery, parsley and the chicken meat included feet, necks, chicken legs, salt, peppercorns and a few cloves. The soup was a clear broth. Noodles were home made and were added after the initial cooking. The soup was eaten in two stages. The soup broth + noodles was the first part of the meal and then then the chicken and vegetables became the main meal. On special occasions we had soup with liver dumplings or semolina dumplings. This recipe is from Slavonia.
Hi, Thank you! Just as my Grandmother Anna Kalcic always use to make it, with the exception of adding a little bit of oxtail or other beef bones with a little bit of meat on them to the pot. I always make this once or twice a year in the fall when the fresh parsnips arrive in my local grocery store.
First off I just want to say thank you so much for publishing this soup recipe. I am 62 years old man and just by chance I googled how to make chicken noodle soup. Each time I have made this soup in the past It always takes me back to when I was a young boy standing in my Czecho-Slovakian grandmothers kitchen in Ohio. Us kids could not wait till that old chicken was cooked and we were able to enjoy her mouth watering soup, with her home made noodles. Sadly her mysterious Czech-o-Slovakian soup recipe went to the grave with her. The only thing different from your recipe was my babicka chose an old fryer from the open air market and cooked it over night on a very low flame. She would (I think) toss the broth out in the morning then refill the pot with water and start over, I also remember an (I think) object in the bottom of the pot that looked like a 10 cm brain that had the consistency of a noodle. You made an almost, old man very happy 🙂