Hello everyone, I am Chef Adou.

A national first-class chef who has been cooking for 24 years and a senior Chinese cooking technician.

Follow me, share healthy food, cooking skills and ingredients knowledge, and protect your family's health.

I hope to get your support and wish you and your family good health.

Chicken soup, as the nation's favorite nourishing soup, has special memories in everyone's mind.

Although chicken soup is nutritious and delicious, if you want to make a delicious pot of chicken soup, you can’t just add all the ingredients randomly. If you add the wrong ingredients, it will ruin the pot of soup.

Please keep in mind the principle of "three additions, three no additions" to ensure that the chicken soup you stew is fresh and delicious, the chicken is not woody, and it is the most replenishing qi and blood.

Regarding stewed chicken soup, the common questions we have are as follows: Should we use roosters or old hens to stew chicken soup?

When stewing chicken soup, do you need to blanch it?

When stewing chicken soup, should we stew the whole chicken or chop it into pieces?

When making chicken soup, should I add cold water or boiling water?

The first question is, should I use a rooster or an old hen to stew chicken soup?

When making chicken soup, the old hen is definitely the first choice.

It's best not to use roosters to stew soup. It's not that it's totally impossible, but the soup produced by roosters is bland and disappointing. It's better to braise it in braise.

Old hens are different, especially those that are more than two years old. The stewed soup is particularly delicious without adding a grain of MSG or chicken essence.

What is the reason?

Chickens need to grow for at least half a year before the flavor substances of the chicken will gradually precipitate. The longer the time, the stronger the umami flavor, which is what we often call the stronger chicken flavor.

Generally speaking, if a chicken has grown for more than 300 days and laid eggs, it can be considered an old hen.

The second question is, does it need to be boiled to stew chicken soup?

As far as my many years of kitchen experience is concerned, serious native chickens do not need to be blanched, but now we ordinary people can’t buy them. Even if we buy so-called native chickens, they are only breeds of native chickens.

The way of life is still in captivity, and the food they eat is feed, which is completely different from the free-range chickens that eat bugs.

Therefore, it is better to blanch it.

The chicken smell of eating feed is very strong, and soaking in blood water cannot completely remove it. Only by blanching can the fishy smell be effectively removed.

The third question, when stewing chicken soup, should I stew the whole chicken or chop it into pieces?

Our restaurant will choose whole chicken stew, which is beautiful and sells it at a good price.

For home stew, it is definitely better to chop it into pieces. Not only will the stew time be shorter, the soup will be fresher, and it will be more convenient to eat.

However, when stewing chicken soup, the chicken pieces should be chopped into larger pieces.

This is an old hen I bought today for 58 yuan.

Looking at its claws, you can tell that they have not traveled much and are smooth and unworn.

But it smells pretty good, without any fishy smell.

We first use kitchen scissors to cut off the chicken's feet, and then cut off the chicken's butt, which contains the tail fat gland and supracoelomic bursa.

Then remove the skin from the chicken neck. These particles are the thymus, a lymphoid organ.

Finally, remove the remaining internal organs from the inner cavity.

What are the places not to eat chicken?

I wrote an article once, and I put it at the end of the article for your convenience.

Next, use a knife to chop the chicken into chunks, as I said before, chop into larger pieces.

Put the chopped chicken into a large basin and wash it with warm water first.

Next, start blanching the water, prepare a large pot, and add a little more cold water.

Place the chicken pieces in a pot of cold water, add a few slices of ginger and a few slices of green onions, and bring to a slow boil over high heat.

When stewing chicken soup, the first thing that cannot be added is cooking wine.

Although cooking wine has a strong effect of removing fishy smell and increasing aroma, it is made from rice wine, water spices and caramel color. Adding cooking wine will not only affect the color of the soup, but also mask the umami flavor of the chicken soup.

When blanching, you can choose to add a little high-quality rice wine or nothing at all.

When simmering chicken soup, be sure not to add cooking wine.

After the water boils, use a spoon to skim off the scum, boil for another 2 minutes and then scoop it out.

After blanching the chicken, we clean it with warm water. It must be warm water, never cold water, to prevent the chicken from expanding and contracting due to the sharp temperature difference, resulting in a bad taste.

We will drain the washed chicken. If you are in a hurry, you can use kitchen paper or a clean towel to dry the chicken.

While we wait, we prepare some stew ingredients.

When stewing chicken soup, the second thing that cannot be added is star anise, cinnamon, and cloves, which are very strong spices.