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Saturday, February 8, 2025

Green Wizardries: Nuclear Noodle Soup

I was planning to write about herb gardens and why my readers might want to plan one or expand the one they already have.  That will have to wait as it seems there is a bit of a cold going around.  I learned about this soup more than twenty five years ago and it has been our standby cold and flu treatment ever since.  

Soup is not our only line of attack.  We drink copious quantities of ginger tea which is very anti-inflammatory  as well as being tasty and comforting.  We take elderberry syrup made from our own frozen elderberries and it is both highly effective at banishing colds and flu while being so very tasty.  We also do the old-fashioned head steaming over a basin of hot water with oil of oregano in it (3 to 5 drops only) and a towel over the head.  This last is very good to treat or, better still, to prevent chest infections.  

To make a great Nuclear Noodle Soup, I start out with chicken stock which naturally contains an enzyme that helps to keep the lungs clear of congestion.  I make this stock from the oldest hens possible as they are tough and can take the long simmering to get all the nutrients and flavour out.  I only use my own birds as I am very fussy about their nutrition and they get a lot of greens to eat which makes their eggs and flesh very healthful.

I usually make a huge cauldron of stock and then pressure can it.  When I started pressure canning, one of my walking buddies asked why it was that I wanted to be a nineteenth century housewife?  This would be because I know for a fact that it is not possible to buy a nutritious and tasty stock of any kind.  My sister in the city was using some store-bought stock and I tasted it.  The flavour reminded me of nothing so much as dirty dishwater.  My brother in law, who is quite the foodie, says that my stock is the best he has ever had.  

If you don’t have stock already made, it is easy to make stock so grab a chicken carcass and find a recipe you like.  Once you have mastered the art of making a good stock, your cooking will improve by a whole letter grade.  

I chopped two of my beautiful red onions and began to fry them in some golden rendered-chicken fat.  The fat on a chicken should be deepest yellow to orange.  If it is white, the bird never got any greens and the flesh is not nutritious.  The eggs we produce here have yolks that are orange and friends from rural China say the eggs on their farm had yolks that were nearly red.  They kept the hens free range and that is the best way.  Here, we feel we have to lock our hens up as there are so many predators, such as mink and eagles, that we feel it is not kind to expose them to so much danger.  

After the onions, I would normally add garlic, home-grown of course, but not today.  I chopped up a heap of fresh garlic and ginger, which I keep frozen in chunks, and I added them at the end of the cooking process as they have more medicinal value when eaten raw.  I did add a bunch of chopped leeks, carrots, peas, sweet red peppers and a quart of canned tomatoes, all from our garden.  The soup looked very pretty and that is important to tempt the appetite of a sick person.  I also threw in about a tablespoon of chili flakes. 

That might sound like a lot of chili but we ended up with six quarts of soup in the end.  I seasoned it with salt and pepper and then chopped up a generous bunch of cilantro and added that right before serving.  

Now, it is called Nuclear Noodle Soup so where do the noodles come in?  I like to cook with rice noodles, especially the broad kind.  I cook them separately, cool them under cold running water and place some noodles in the bottom of the soup bowl.  Any extra noodles should be placed in a covered dish in the fridge.  The soup should be served with chili sauce on the side.  

The soup is tasty, pretty and comforting.  It is easy to put the leftover soup in quart jars while it is very hot and put the lids on.  As they cool, a seal develops which enhances the keeping quality of the soup.  This is not canning, just a little hack for keeping the soup fresher longer.  It still needs to go into the fridge.  I hope you will try making this soup as I am sure it will do you good.  

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