Chicken Soup with Semolina Pasta Recipe Photos with commentary

Anthony's Chicken Soup with Semolina Pasta Recipe Photos
with Commentary
(Step by step photos of the cooking process for this recipe with commentary!)

Read the complete Chicken Soup recipe
.

I have placed some explanatory photos below that, hopefully, will help you along in your Italian culinary adventure. Sometimes a picture and a few tips really helps!... ;-) These are the details I feel are always missing in your average recipe book or recipe website.

Making the Chicken Soup with Semolina Pasta. Step by step photos Part 1
Making the Semolina pasta by hand and preparing the chicken.

Here we have everything you will need to make this wonderful homemade Chicken Soup with Semolina pasta. This truly is the best soup I have ever had. Every time I make it I am instantly brought back to a simpler time and all is right with the world. It's that good :-) Food and good memories are a powerful thing!

Make sure you get a "whole" chicken. You want the whole thing. I don't really have a particular brand I can recommend. Chicken is chicken in most cases.

You will need a nice large pot with a thick bottom. You will be cooking the soup for a long time so a nice pot with a thick bottom will help preventing you from burning the soup. I believe these large pot with thick bottoms are called stock pots. What you are looking for is a pot that has this feature; (thick stainless encapsulated bottom)

Pour the Semolina Flour right onto your counter. Make sure you wash the counter first :-)

Make a well in the middle of the flour and add the eggs..

Now mix it all up like you are making scrambled eggs. Keep mixing while slowly add more flour tot he eggs.

Start to use your hand and keep mixing....

Then add some salt and Olive Oil.

Then add in some fresh chopped parsley. Don't chop the parsley too fine. Then mix in the parsley with the dough. Keep working with the dough. It's going to feel very stiff, just keep working with it.

.Add some more Olive oil if the dough is too firm.

Start to knead the dough like you are making bread.

This is hard work. You are going to have to work at this. The pasta dough will feel very dense and firm. Just keep working with it until you start to get a nice elastic feel to the dough. A good way to check it is to poke the dough with your finger, if the indentation bounces back at a little bit then the dough is ready.

There it is!!! A beautiful Semolina Pasta dough ball. YUM!!! This stuff is YUM!!! Only way to put it!

So, take the large pasta dough ball and split it up into 5 small dough balls. I like to dough this so the pasta dries out faster. You are going to use a grater to grate this pasta to use in the soup and you want it to be pretty dry when you start to grate the pasta. Wrap these up in plastic wrap and place them into the fridge.

Now onto the chicken! Take you whole chicken and wash it. There is a lot of interesting talk about washing your chicken on this page here. Regardless of what you read on the internet. Wash your chicken. That's what my Grandmother and mom did so I'm washing my chicken! :-)

...As you are washing your chicken you will find all kinds of little surprises inside. There is usually a back that has the neck in it. Remove that and throw it away..

You may also find some gizzards and chicken guts stuff. YUM.... Take it out and throw it away, unless you like to fry that stuff up which some do.. After you have taken everything out of the chicken, be sure to wash the inside well.

Making the Chicken Soup with Semolina Pasta. Step by step photos Part 2
Adding the chicken, veggies and other tasty stuff into the pot.

Here is my lovely wife demonstrating the dropping of the chicken into the pot. The soup is on.... :-)

There is the lovely bird sitting in the pot ready to be cooked..

Add in your water. You want just enough water to cover the top of the chicken. So amount of water will very depending on the size of your chicken and pot.

Add a bay leaf and a chicken bullion.

Then large chunks of chopped celery.

... Then large pieces of carrots.

Get the water up to a slow boil and stir.

Now add some chopped onion.

...Stir some more....

...then add in some fresh chopped garlic...

...Stir some more... Cook some more...

Add in some fresh chopped parsley..

Here I am feverishly typing out all the details on the laptop. Gotta write down every step!

Stir some more, keep the water at a slow boil and let it sit and cook making sure to stir every now and then.

Then play a nice family game together while the soup is cooking and making the house smell wonderful. For some strange reason every time we play a family game our cat has to get right in the middle! He does this with scrabble and messes up the letters!

Oh yeah... It's looking like chicken soup now and smelling wonderful!!!! OK, a lot more details to go. Onward...

Making the Chicken Soup with Semolina Pasta. Step by step photos Part 3
Removing the chicken from the bone after it's been cooked.

Now get a nice large cutting board which you will use to get all the good chicken off the bones. Just ignore the Semolina Pasta dough on the side there, they are drying to be used later. I had them in the fridge from the night before and took them out of the fridge to dry out a bit before grating.

With two wooden spoons, take the chicken out of the soup and onto the cutting board.

Eiik!!! his missing a leg!!!.

Alright where is that leg....?.

Auh ha! Found it! :-)

Continue to carefully go through the soup taking out any strange bits of chicken like bones, cartilage, skin, etc... This is the part where you are cleaning up the soup, selecting the best parts of the chicken to put back into the soup..

With two forks, stat to dismantle the chicken getting all the best pieces separated from the chicken carcass..

You will be working at this for a while. While you are doing this, the chicken soup without the chicken should continue to cook at a slow boil.

.Keep working at it, there is a lot of good chicken there....

.Keep going, you are almost there...

Auh yes... The Semolina pasta dough is drying nicely :-).

Very nice! We have successfully removed all the tasty bits of chicken from the chicken carcass.

Here we have the chicken soup that has been continuing to cook without the chicken.

Now what you want to do is start breaking up the large chicken chunks into smaller ones with a wooden spoon. Work at chopping up the really large pieces so you have a lot of nice bite size pieces.

There is the wonderful chick chopped up and ready to go back into the soup.

.Wonderful. This soup is really coming together now and smelling wonderful. The chicken is perfect. I know because I was eating some while cleaning the carcass ;-)

Making the Chicken Soup with Semolina Pasta. Step by step photos Part 4
Grating the Semolina pasta and adding it to the soup!

Now we have the chicken soup with cleaned up yummy chicken bits cooking together. Soup is really getting tasty at this point!

These are the pasta balls that were sitting in the fridge all night. Before I started grating the pasta balls, I unwrapped them and let the sit out on the counter for a while while I was cleaning up the chicken as you saw in the photos above..

Get yourself and nice large cutting board and a greater and have your Semolina pasta dough balls ready to go. This stuff is really key to the grater taste of this incredible soup!

Start grating.... When the dough ball gets about halfway done, you might have to reform it pinching it against the greater to grate every last bit of the ball.

When you grate the pasta it should have a nice dryness to it and should grate in 1/2" to 1" long pieces. It doesn't matter if you get tiny pieces. it's all going in the soup! YUM!!! You want to use the large holes on your grater for this.

This was such a beautiful afternoon. i was so happy to be making this soup and having it come out just like my grandmothers. Auh, the joys of great homemade food! As I was starting to grate the pasta with the wonderful smell of the chicken soup in the house I was drifting back to some great childhood memories!

Keep grating... You want to grate every pit of this wonderful pasta..

Here is a nice shot of the grated Semolina pasta. Trying to get you a nice shot of the lovely texture.

OK, here is a better shot. This is such great tasting stuff. Really adds so much to the soup. The texture and taste of this Semolina pasta is just wonderful! I remember my Grandmother and Mom making this and when they were grating it I would always sneak a taste thinking to myself... I have no clue what this stuff is but it's wonderful!!! ..and now and can cook it! Isn't life just wonderful? It is when you can make grandma's soup!

One more shot trying to show you the texture, look and feel of the pasta. Wish you could taste it! You can.. Go ahead and make this stuff, you will be glad you did!

All the hard work has paid off big time! The chicken soup is just about done, the Semolina pasta is all grated and ready to go in the soup, we are just about ready to eat!

Slowly start to pour pasta into the soup stirring as you go. Now important note: You will most likely have too much pasta. You want to judge this carefully, you don't want to put too much pasta in the soup. make sure you have a lot of broth to pasta ratio. You can always cook the pasta you have left over later.

This is one happy Italian man right here! Quick tip on what to do with the leftover pasta. Boil it for about 4 minutes, add some olive oil, fresh parsley, crushed red pepper for a little zing, ground black pepper and some fresh Parmesan. Great meal!

There it is in all it's glory! Finished and ready to eat!

I like to have a nice table setting with the pot of chicken sitting right on the center of the table. I highly recommend a good red wine with this.

I highly recommend this lovely Sicilian wine to go with the meal. The best Italian Red Wine I've ever had!
Villa Pozzi - Nero d'Avola Sicilia. Great stuff! You get get it pretty cheap here.

Making the Chicken Soup with Semolina Pasta. Step by step photos Part 4
Serving the finished product. YUM!

The soup is on the table and ready!!!.

Serve everyone and nice large bowl and make sure they have second! i remember finishing a large bowl of this wonderful soup at my grandmothers and being joyfully stuffed and she would say you want another plate? I would say no grandma I'm full and she would say, you need to eat more.. Mangia! And would fill up my bowl again and i had no choice but to eat it all :-)

This is very important. You MUST add fresh Parmesan to the soup before eating. It's an important step to the overall flavor of this soup. Eat! Eat!!!

I honestly cannot put into words how wonderful this soup is. You are just going to have to try it!

There it is! Finished with fresh Parmesan added. Dig in! Use a large table spoon. Do not try to eat this soup with a little bitty tea spoon. Oh, I got in big trouble for this once with my grandma. What are you doing with that little spoon she says. You can't get any soup on that thing. Use a big a spoon!!! ~ Enjoy!

OK, that was just lovely! Now take me back to the main recipe.