From Bloody Chicken To Best Cook In The Family

Who knew?

I’m living proof you can go from the worst to the best.

The first time I ever cooked for my new in-laws back in the 80’s I followed a recipe for boneless chicken breasts.

I thought I’d impress my new in-laws with my cooking. So they would get over the fact that their Sultan son, (king-like son) married an American. I thought I’d show them how wrong they were.

He said his mom liked chicken breasts.

So I went to the grocery store and bought the biggest, most expensive chicken breasts I could find.

They were huge bone-in chicken breasts. I declared dinner ready about 25 minutes later. My new mother-in-law asked, are you sure?

I was so angry, till the blood ran out of the chicken.

Then the blood ran out of my face.

But now, 35 years later, she would be proud of me. I’m the best cook in the family. The go to for good home cooked family dinners and Thanksgiving. Who knew it could happen? Not me.

My mom never asked me to help cook so I knew nothing when my mother-in-law first asked me to help prepare dinner in her home.

She gave me a potato and a knife and asked me to peel the potatoes. Later that night, I remember my father-in-law and new husband asking if that’s all the mashed potatoes there were.

She started laughing about how after I was done peeling them with a knife there were like inch-long finger-looking potatoes left, lol.

She died at the very young age of 51 so I barely had 10 years with her. But during those 10 years, seeing how little I knew, how much her son loved me, and how I was the mother of 2 of her grandchildren, she tried to teach me everything she knew. She knew from day one that I knew nothing.

She taught me all her family recipes. All healthy, Middle Eastern dishes. I now make the best cabbage and grape leaf dolma in the family.

I make Bushalla and Kipta, beef kabobs, jujee kabob, Ghorma Sabzi, red rice and meat, Persian salad, mus missir, Kesha battomjun, etc.

Most importantly, she taught me how to make her chicken soup from scratch.

Whenever anyone gets sick you can find me in the kitchen boiling a huge chicken to make my bone broth, and then soup for them.

I was just remembering it on this cold rainy day in Wisconsin while I made a big pot of homemade chicken soup from scratch for my grandson.

I was lucky I had the time with her that I did have and that she taught me to cook delicious, healthy Assyrian meals that have sustained my family for over three decades. The Assyrian calendar is at year 6774 so they know how to cook and eat for longevity, lol.

I looked up and thanked her out loud and then wanted to write this.

I wish you could smell my hot, steaming kitchen right now. The fresh smells of cilantro, bay leaves, and bone broth almost seem to have helped my grandson’s runny nose and he hasn’t even eaten yet.

So here for you is my Assyrian Mother-in-laws Homemade Chicken Soup Recipe to cure almost everything:

Take one whole chicken and clean it out well. Take the skin off and discard. Rinse it off. put it in a big pot of water almost covered and add 3 whole bay leaves and 1 onion cut in 1/2. Bring to a boil and then lower to a low-medium boil, mostly covered for 1 hour.

Remove the whole chicken and put it onto a plate to cool off.

Strain broth through a strainer into a new clean pot. That becomes your bone broth.

Throw away everything in the strainer like the onion and bay leaves.

Put the bone broth in the new pot on the stove. Add salt, cut-up carrots, potatoes, and chopped cilantro. Cook for 20 minutes covered. Then add cut-up pieces of the chicken breasts only to soup. Add thin soup noodles if you want and cook for 5 or 10 more minutes. Don’t add too many noodles or tomorrow there won’t be any broth left. Squeeze some lemon juice in it and enjoy.

She would take the leg/thigh combos and the wings and fry them in olive oil and hot pepper and serve that on the side of the soup. The rest of the chicken carcass gets thrown away.

Bon appetite!

(right after I say the word carcass, sorry, lol)