Chicken and upo (bottle gourd) soup
You can not imagine how excited I was to take photos of this soup. It’s the first time I snipped some leaves from the cilantro that I planted in the garden last December and you’re seeing them as the green garnish on the soup. I patiently refrained from touching the cilantro until they had grown sufficiently and today is the big day. This isn’t the Vietnamese cilantro that I’ve been adding to my dishes for the past several months but real cilantro. Click here if you want to read some garden tips on how to grow cilantro.
Another reason I am so excited about this soup dish is that it makes use of meat from chicken soup bones. If you’re a supermarket regular, you might have noticed that chicken is packed in several ways — whole, choice cuts, fillets and soup bones. The soup bones are NOT bare bones. They actually have a lot of meat in them. From a one kilo pack that costs about 40% to 60% less than regular packs, you get enough chicken meat to make a large pot of soup. The global recession does not mean we can’t try and eat well, does it? We home cooks just have to be more conscientious shoppers. If you grow vegetables and herbs in your garden, that’ll help your budget even more. The recipe…
Serves 4 to 6.
Ingredients:
To make the broth
1 kilo of chicken soup bones
1/2 head of garlic
1 whole onion
1 tbsp. of peppercorns
To complete the soup
1 whole upo (bottle gourd), peeled, seeds scraped off then cut into 1-1/2-inch cubes
1/2 head of garlic, minced
1 onion, finely sliced
2 tomatoes, roughly chopped
3 to 4 tbsps. of cooking oil
patis (fish sauce)
freshly ground pepper
cilantro, to garnish
Place the chicken pieces in a large pot, cover with water and bring to the boil. Remove scum as it rises. Add the garlic, onion and peppercorns (it is easier to remove scum when no peppercorns float in the liquid). Lower the heat, cover and simmer for an hour.
Scoop out the chicken, cool and separate the meat from the bones.
Strain the broth.
Heat the cooking oil in a large pot. Saute the garlic, onion and tomatoes until they start to turn soft. Add the chicken meat and upo cubes. Pour in the broth. Season with patis and add a generous amount of freshly ground pepper. Bring to the boil, lower the heat, cover and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes or until the upo is done.
Garnish with snipped cilantro (optional but highly recommended) and serve at once.
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Smart buy with the soup chicken bones! I, too, am a regular buyer of pork neck and bones at the local grocery store. I use them for sinigang and other soups. I guess Americans are more used to fillets and tender meat without the bones. Good for me! I can always get these meat-bone cuts cheap!
thank god I am not the only one who buys soup bones (chicken carcass) I get them here in Chinatown groceries, a carcass after boiling yields like 2 cups of flaked chicken meat good for chcicken salad or your recipe or any chicken soup that call for chicken flakes and the bet part, they are only a dollar per bag which usually have 2 chcken carcasses, and yield the best chicken broth, after boiling the bones, I usually pick the meat, then chop the bones then boil it again and it yields more marrow or gelatine which makes for a richer broth then just strain it when I need the broth.
Connie, you are a girl after my own heart. i haveto hide this boiling the carcass from my wife and daughters who are so qumish about this buying chicken that has been cut up by somebody, but I tell tem ‘i double bol them and you enjoy the food that comes out. Just goes to show you who the cook in the family is.
sorry no spell check on Yahoo
Looking at the pic of the chicken with upo, I think that it is a variation of tinola, diva?
Neposter, this habit of making use of every part of the animal (cow and pig entrails, fish bones and skin, chicken and duck carcass) is, I think, very Asian. Like Annemariemarie mentions in comment #1, most Westerners think in terms of choice cuts and fillets, not knowing that the closer the meat to the bones, the more flavorful it is.
Diva? LOL I’m humbled.
No, not really tinola — no ginger.
I cook this normally with sotanghon which my siblings really love. And with regards to the chicken soup bones they’re really great. My siblings even love the adobo using this them. =D