Around the world in chicken soup: Here's how the elixir is enjoyed in 7 delicious cultures

Chicken soup is a nearly universal expression of love, nurturing and care-giving — one that deliciously manifests itself from culture to culture.

In this series of stories, we have explored chicken soups on five continents and one sub-continent. (Excuse us, Austrailia! Sorry Antarctica!) We thought, as the Northeast is blanketed in snow, that it would be cozy to round them up.

Thailand: Tom Kha Kai (Coconut-Galangal Chicken Soup)

“If you can smash things, cut things and boil water, you can pull off this classic on the first try,” writes Leela Punyaratabandhu in the headnote to her recipe for coconut-galangal chicken soup in Simple Thai Food, from which this recipe is adapted. (Read our review of the book.) She’s right: Once we had those key fresh ingredients, which we found at a local Asian supermarket, making the soup was remarkably quick and easy — and stunningly delicious.

It has lovely richness from the coconut, tang from lime juice and beautiful perfume from lemongrass and makrut lime leaves. Though it was based on store-bought chicken broth, it was as fabulous as any we’ve had in Thai restaurants.

RECIPE: Tom Kha Kai (Coconut-Galangal Chicken Soup)

Brazil: Canja de Galinha

In Brazil, chicken soup comes with rice. “Canja de galinha is the soup my grandma used to make — not just for me but for our whole family,” says Junior Borges, a super talented Rio-born chef in Dallas.

The chef still enjoys his canja. “I think it’s definitely one of those comforting, comforting things. For us, it’s our chicken noodle soup.” (Read more about it here.)

For this one, you’ll start with chicken parts, so it’s a homemade broth, soothing and aromatic. It’s finished with cilantro and parsley.

RECIPE: Junior Borges’ Canja de Galinha

Ethiopia: Ye Ocholoni Ina Doro Shorba (Peanut-Chicken Soup)

Thick, warm and satisfying, Ethiopian ye ocholoni in doro shorba gets its richness and body from peanuts; it’s beautifully spiced with Berbere spice mix. Ours is adapted from Jenn Louis’ The Chicken Soup Manifesto — a marvelous cookbook that explores chicken soups and stews from 64 countries. Lately Louis, a well-known chef in Portland, Oregon,has devoted herself to feeding her city’s homeless people, who have been suffering terribly during the pandemic. (There’s a link on her website to help her with donations, or even with cooking.) Thank you, Chef!

RECIPE: Ye Ocholoni Ina Doro Shorba

Eastern Europe: Ashkenazi Jewish Chicken Soup

This is the chicken soup I grew up with, which is in the same vein as the chicken soup Jewish mothers all over the United States have made for their families for eons. I happen to think the one my mom taught me is the best in the universe. It starts with a whole chicken. Very basic, very delicious.

RECIPE: Joan’s Chicken Soup

Mexico: Sopa de Lima (Yucatán-Style Chicken-Lime Soup)

I love this bright, light chicken soup from Mexico’s Yucatán region, which also comes to Cooks Without Borders via Louis’ The Chicken Soup Manifesto. It’s a good one to make when you don’t have time to make homemade broth. I do like to take the time to fry up some tortilla chips — which is also a great way to use up stale corn tortillas. If you miss Mexico as much as I do — or always wanted to go there — you’ll love this.

RECIPE: Jenn Louis’ Sopa de Lima

Tibet: Thukpa (Tibetan Chicken-Noodle Soup)

Thukpa, a fiery chicken-noodle soup from Tibet, is just the thing when you want super-flavorful chicken soup with lots of veg — it has cabbage, green beans, tomatoes, carrots, bean sprouts, bamboo shoots and bell peppers. It comes together quickly, as it’s based on store-bought chicken broth.

We found it in Maneet Chauhan’s Chaat: Recipes from the Kitchens, Markets and Railways of India. Read more about it here.

RECIPE: Maneet Chauhan’s Thukpa

Iran: Abgusht-e Morgh Ba Kufteh-ye Nokhodchi (Persian Chicken Soup with Chickpea and Lamb Meatballs)

I saved my favorite for last: a Persian chicken soup with tender lamb meatballs and an incredible garnish of dried rose petals, herbs and garlic.

This is the most aromatic and interesting chicken soup I've probably ever tasted — tinted with aromatic saffron and redolent of cardamom and cumin. It’s adapted from one of my favorite cookbooks — Food of Life by Najmieh Batmanglij. We wrote about it last month.

Making this soup is a huge project, so reserve a whole afternoon for it — it’s the perfect project for this weekend!

RECIPE: Persian Chicken Soup with Lamb Meatballs

Did you enjoy this story? Read about who we are and what we do.

Rose petals, saffron and tender lamb meatballs: Now that's a chicken soup!

This is the fourth story in our series, Around the World in Chicken Soup.

The Great Confinement has been for me, as much as anything, a year of cooking. My time in the kitchen — chopping, simmering, marinating, braising, baking, slicing, stirring, researching dishes, poring over recipes — has kept me sane, kept me focused, provided escape, resulted in joy and kept my family well fed. We are extremely lucky that we can afford to eat and that we have access to food — facts that have not escaped my consciousness for a single moment, and for which I’m continually grateful.

During these 11 months, if there’s one dish that took me out of myself and away from that narrow physical and mental place that the pandemic has wedged us into, it would be the Persian chicken soup with chickpea-and-lamb meatballs called abgusht-e morgh ba kufteh-ye nokhodchi.

The obvious and immediate miracle of the dish is its incredible flavor and aromas: the perfume of saffron, the gorgeousness of mint leaves and rose petals strewn on top, the tender lusciousness of the lamb meatballs, the soothing comfort of the rich and aromatic chicken broth. I still have a hard time conceiving that we ate something so delicious, so unusual, in our own home. Honestly, it’s one of the most interesting things I’ve eaten ever, anywhere.

But equally (if not even more) transporting was the experience of cooking this soup. The afternoon I spent discovering its mysteries was one of the most pleasurable I’ve spent all year long.

Consider the premise: You stuff a whole chicken with rice, spices and dried rose petals. (Rose petals!) Wrap it in cheesecloth, submerge it in a broth scented with cardamom, rosewater, saffron and more, and simmer it gently for an hour and a half. Remove the chicken and debone it. Then drop in meatballs you’ve made from ground lamb, aromatic spices, onion and chickpea flour. Chickpeas go in the broth as well, along with the chicken meat and stuffing, and all that wonderful stuff cooks some more. 

Your home now smells heavenly, and for a grand finale, here comes a whopper of a flourish: Chopped mint or cilantro, plus garlic and more dried rose petals. You’ll pass that in a bowl around the table for everyone to add on top just before eating. 

The meatballs are spectacular. The scents of rose and saffron and cardamom and cumin and herbs are intoxicating. The garnish sends it into a transcendent dimension. 

After I made the soup and recovered from my saffron-and-rose-petal high, I wanted to learn more about the recipe, so I called Najmieh Batmanglij — the Washington, D.C.-based author of Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies, in which I found it. The 1986 cookbook is widely considered to be the definitive tome of the genre; Yotam Ottolenghi called Batmanglij “The goddess of Iranian cooking.” 

She and her husband fled Iran in 1979 during the revolution, relocating to Vence, in the south of France, where she wrote her first cookbook, Ma Cuisine d’Iran. Recently Batmanglij spent three years researching her latest book, Cooking in Iran, published in 2019. “I traveled all over Iran,” she said, “and I noticed they love meatballs.” 

Persian chicken soup with chickpea-and-lamb meatballs — abgusht-e morgh ba kufteh-ye nokhodchi. The Iranian dish is served with sabzi khordan, the fresh herb platter ubiquitous on Iranian tables.

Talking with the author was nearly as much fun as making the soup. I knew from her headnote that it’s traditionally served by Jews in Kashan and Hamedan for sabbath dinner (those two cities are south and southeast respectively from Tehran), that it should be served with “saffron flavored rice, pickles and a platter of herbs,” and that it was inspired by one Professor Abbas Amanat, who had gotten the recipe from his mother. Batmanglij told me that Professor Amanat teaches history at Yale University. 

She also revealed that she brought a couple of her own thoughtful touches to the dish — among them, deboning the chicken.  “Traditionally,” she told me, “they use the whole chicken, and when they serve it, the whole thing is in the soup. Wrapping it in the cheesecloth, that’s my French background.”

Diluting the saffron in rose water rather than plain water was her innovation as well, inspired by a technique she’d seen in a medieval Persian cookbook. The two ingredients together do something truly magical.

I made a couple of slight modifications of my own, including adding an option to use canned chick peas rather than soaking overnight and pre-cooking dried ones. More significantly, I also suggest passing of the rose-petal-and-herb garnish at the table. Batmanglij’s recipe calls for stirring it all before in serving it. 

Nan-e-barbari — Persian Bread. We fashioned ours from store-bought pizza dough.

Of course the author’s way is culturally correct. A soup like this, Batmanglij told me, is usually eaten “by people from humble backgrounds. They put the garnish on top, and they put the pot in the middle of the table, with plenty of bread. Serving individual things means more labor.” 

While at our house, we skipped the saffron-flavored rice accompaniment, I did serve the soup with nan-e-barbari, Persian flatbread, and a sabzi khordan, the fresh herb platter Batmanglij suggested, and which is ubiquitous on Iranian tables. (Here’s a hack for making home-made nan-e-barbari from store-bought pizza dough, courtesy of Nilou Motamed, former editor of Food & Wine.)

The herbs of the sabzi khordan brought beautiful freshness to each bite.

Obviously, building this marvelous soup is a project, something to take slowly and enjoy, not something to be rushed through on a busy weeknight. But should you find yourself wondering how to fill a long and lazy Sunday or Saturday afternoon, I can’t think of a more delicious undertaking.

RECIPE: Persian Chicken Soup with Chickpea and Lamb Meatballs

RECIPE: Sabzi Khordan

RECIPE: Nan-e-Barbari (Persian Flatbread)

Did you enjoy this story? Read about who we are and what we do.

Jenn Louis' new 'Chicken Soup Manifesto' celebrates the feel-better elixir as expressed in 64 countries

No sooner had we embarked on an epic voyage around the world in a bowl of chicken soup, when the startling revelation that we were not the first to do so splashed into our soupy consciousness.

Of course to travel well, one must be open to diversions, and this one is so fortuitous: Renowned Portland, Oregon chef Jenn Louis has just published a new book, The Chicken Soup Manifesto: Recipes from Around the World.

Next-day delivery put the book in our hot little hands. It spoke to me right from the intro:

“Looking at the world through the lens of a simple bowl of chicken soup reveals volumes about a society and its people: the ingredients within their reach, the techniques that mark their style of cooking, and, often, a folkloric or family history, too.”

Almost all cultures have chicken in common, Louis continued; her manifesto is an account of “the diversity of a commonality.”

After taking a spin through its delightful pages, I picked up the phone and called the author, who was happy to talk about why and how she wrote it.

Traveling home several winters ago from a charity event, she had come down with a bad cold — so bad she couldn’t even imagine how she’d survive a two-hour plane flight. She texted her sister, who surprised her by leaving a giant pot of chicken soup on her doorstep to greet her on her arrival home.

“I ate three bowls, really fast,” Louis recalled. “Though I was still sick, I felt so much better. And I just kept thinking: This is a thing. This is magic!”

The experience led her to think about how chicken soup is a culinary connection that is shared by cultures around the world, while expressing different flavors and sporting different garnishes from land to land. To explore them, she launched her into a soupful odyssey, as she collected, developed and researched chicken soup recipes from all over — many crowd-sourced from her friends and followers around the world. A Palestinian woman she sat next to on another plane trip told her unbidden about her mother’s (Hanan’s Mom’s Palestinian Chicken Soup, page 176). Some of the soups came to her through Facebook posts.

The result is deliciously diverse — filled with bowls both familiar (Greek Avgolemono, Mexican Pozole Verde, Thai Tom Kha Gai) and new to me. There’s Kubbeh Hamusta from Iraq: a turmeric-tinged chicken and chick pea soup with zucchini and semolina dumplings filled with minced chicken, onion, parsley and spices. Dak Kalguksu from Korea — a rich broth with shredded chicken and hand-cut noodles (kalguksu means “knife noodles”), garnished with scallions and a chile-soy-sesame sauce.

Ye Ocholoni Ina Doro Shorba, prepared from a recipe in ‘The Chicken Soup Manifesto,” by Jenn Louis

I’d been looking for one from Ethiopia for this “Around the World in Chicken Soup” series of stories, and I found it on page 34: Ye Ocholoni Ina Doro Shorba, a peanut-chicken soup.

I gathered ingredients – chicken broth, chicken breasts, peanut butter, a plump sweet potato, onions and carrots. I toasted whole spices (green cardamom, cloves, fenugreek seeds, coriander) and ground them up to make a Berbere spice mix. I got out my soup pot; it didn’t take too long to put together.

Thick, warm, comforting, garnished with chopped roasted peanuts and an extra sprinkling of Berbere spice, it hit the spot.

I’ll be dipping back into the book once or twice for this series, with a review in mind as well.

In the meantime, it goes without saying that the book’s timing is impeccable. Heading into what’s likely to be a brutal winter, so many of us will be needing chicken soup.

So please: Help yourself to a bowl of Ye Ocholoni Ina Dora Shorba.

RECIPE: Ye Ocholoni Ina Dora Shorba (Ethiopian Peanut-Chicken Soup)

And yes, this book will make a marvelous holiday gift.

👉🏾 Visit the COOKS WITHOUT BORDERS SHOP at Bookshop 👈🏾

Around the world in chicken soup: First stop, Rio de Janiero, for a comforting bowl of canja de galinha

Clockwise from upper left: Thai Tom Kha Kai; Tibetan Thukpa; Mexican Caldo de Pollo; Brazilian Canja de Galinha

It’s a rare dish that appears in cuisines all over the world. Chicken soup — the global feel-better elixir — is one of them. Soothing and comforting at a time when so many Americans are ailing from a pandemic or smarting from a bruising political battle, it is this season’s perfect panacea.

Chicken soup can celebrate what so many of us have in common: When someone sniffles, moms and grandmas (and increasingly pops and grandpas) around the globe drop chicken in water with aromatics and simmer away.

At the same time, from the Americas to Asia, from Eastern Europe to the Levant and Africa, chicken soups have the qualities and tastes that make every culture deliciously unique.

There’s the American-Jewish version I grew up with: a chicken in the pot with celery, onion, carrots and dill; egg noodles went in at the end. There are more colorful versions, like a Mexican caldo de pollo, zingy with lime, that might feature cabbage, zucchini, garbanzo beans or chunks of corn-on-the-cob — plus lots of cilantro.

Joan’s chicken soup — a classic Jewish-American bowl

There are tangy, herbal, coconutty versions, like Thailand’s tom kha kai; fragrantly spicy chicken soups called djaj from Lebananon or Morocco; peanutty versions like Ghana’s nkatenkwan. In China, there is rich and tonic qing dun quan ji, in which a chicken is blanched then long-simmered in water with a big piece of smashed ginger, scallions and Shaoxing wine; some cooks add tonic roots or goji berries toward the end. 

 Tibetan Thukpa has tomatoes, vermicelli, vegetables and chiles; in Iran, chickpea-and-lamb meatballs swim with the chicken in abgusht-e-margh ba kufteh-ye nokhodchi; and in Vietnam, big rice-noodle-happy bowls of pho ga, whose broth is scented with star-anise and cinnamon, come with an array of fresh herbs, bean sprouts and chiles to add in at the table.

 Is it too much to dream that a trip around the world in a bowl of chicken soup might bring us together, help us understand each other, heal us as a nation?

Well, as my Jewish grandma would have said, “It vudn’t hoit!”

If you’ve always wanted to visit Rio, you might instead dive into a bowl of canja de galhina, Brazil’s beloved chicken-and-rice soup.

“Canja de galinha is the soup my grandma used to make — not just for me but for our whole family,” says Junior Borges, a super talented Rio-born chef in Dallas. Borges’ highly anticipated restaurant, Meridian — which will feature American cooking with Brazilian influences — is expected to open early next year.

The chef still enjoys canja; in fact his mom, who’s originally from Bahia, but now lives in Dallas, made him a bowl just last week.

“I think it’s definitely one of those comforting, comforting things. For us, it’s our chicken noodle soup.”

Canja de Galinha, from a recipe by Rio-born Dallas chef Junior Borges

The chef’s grandmother usually started with chicken neck, wings and thighs, “and served it with the bones and everything. Sometimes it had carrots or whatever we had in the kitchen, but always rice, chicken, the stock, and then you put a decent amount of olive oil and herbs — parsley, cilantro, maybe some scallions. Primarily green stuff, which goes into almost everything the Brazilians do.”

Gently seasoned with lime and finished with lots of parsley and cilantro, the version Borges shared with us — which is close to his grandma’s —starts with bone-in chicken legs or breasts (or both), which you remove from the bones for nicer presentation; it gets extra body from diced potato. The canja comes together surprisingly quickly; you can have it on the table within an hour.

 Rio is just the first stop on our tour: In the coming weeks, we will feature chicken soups from all around the globe.

Stay well, everyone.

RECIPE: Junior Borges’ Canja de Galinha