As I mentioned before, I prefer to make complex, multi-ingredient recipes that take hours to prepare. However, sometimes one feels like creating a simple, easy-to-make old favorite. In our family, chicken soup with rice is one of such staples.
The most difficult part of making this soup is preparing chicken stock. The stock is central to this dish’s success and can under no circumstances be substituted with the store-bought kind. To make really good chicken stock (that you can use for all kinds of soups, not just this one), take some chicken meat on the bone. I only had drumsticks in the house, so I took four of them, removed the skin(nobody in hour house likes the skin) and put them into a large pan filled with water.
I also added a medium-sized onion, two small bay leaves, and several peppercorns. After this is done, put the pan on high heat. It is very important that your stock never starts to boil. This is why you need to hang around as it heat up. Grey foam will start appearing on top of the stock, and you will have to keep removing it with a slotted spoon. Granted, that’s a drag, but the more foam you remove, the clearer your stock will end up looking. After the stock comes almost to the boiling point, lower the heat, add some salt, dice a carrot and add it to the stock. Now, your stock will need to remain on low heat for about 90 minutes.
This is what your stock will look like after it’s done:
Don’t forget to remove the bay leaf and the onion after the stock is ready.
While the stock is cooking, boil some eggs and make some white rice the way you regularly make it. Make sure the rice isn’t mushy. Put a tablespoonful of rice, half a boiled egg, some chopped fresh cilantro into a bowl. Add the stock. Throw in a couple of croutons. And you are ready to eat.
Notice how clear the stock looks. You can barely even see it. This means it was made correctly and enough foam was removed in the process.
This soup can easily be eaten as a main course.
Enjoy!
Clarissa's Blog 
That looks yummy and interesting with the boiled egg in it.
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Thank you! Some people prefer to leave the egg a little bit runny in the middle, so that could be an option, too.
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Great looking dish. Making stock is hard work but it’s totally worth it. The only thing I’d change for me would be wild rice instead of white rice. Somehow white rice doesn’t appeal to me in soups, both visually and taste-wise.
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I have really good wild rice at home. I have no idea why I didn’t give it a try. The soup is a staple of traditional Soviet cuisine and we had no idea what wild rice was. So now I’m just following the traditional recipe.
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I like to make a base by boiling onions, carrots, chicken carcass and garlic in a chicken stock base. Then the carcass pieces are removed and some soy sauce, butter and olive oil are added to the base. Heat this up, add chopped chicken and pre cooked brown rice. Mix some of the broth with sour cream to make a cream base. Once it is tempered, add it to the soup and heat all of the incredients together. A good bowl of chicken and brown rice cream soup is to be had. Enjoy
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Interesting. Doesn’t the base come out all muddy if you boil it?
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