Ode To Whole Foods Thai Chicken Soup
Well, I called this an ode to Whole Foods Thai Chicken Soup before I knew what an ode was, sorry lol. This is really more investigative journalism and a tribute to what I thought was one of the best soups in the world.
Really? A box of soup from Whole Foods was one of the best in the world?
Yes.
In just 200 calories you got a really fantastic lunch. Thick, bloated by salt fettucine noodles cut short. Small square chunks of dark meat chicken. Bell peppers, carrots, ginger, lime juice, lemongrass, all rounded out with some soy sauce. That's literally the ingredient list and I have it memorized because I've tried to copy it so many times. Oh, I think there's chili paste in there too but we'll discuss that later.
Where did it go? The last time I asked for it on Instacart the shopper said it wasn't in stock. Seriously? It's always in stock, right next to the stocks and other soups. It had to be there. About a week later I rolled into Whole Foods and it's gone. No position on the shelf. In fact the position had been taken over by that Engine 9 brand -or whatever the firefighter one is- by their version of chili. Side note- tried the chili and it sucked, sorry. Consider seasoning it.
I dunno, maybe they had production issues and just gave up on it. It kinda seemed like someone pitched Whole Foods the idea of taking what I'd consider the most minimal Whole-Foods-Brand qualifying ingredients and making a soup with it. For a long time I tried to figure out how to get fettuccine that thick until I realised when it sits in a container with salt long enough it sort of bloats out in puffiness. Whatever it was, it was awesome. Although twice I got a container of just soup ingredients. Like a brick of chicken and noodles and finely chopped vegetables but no soup liquid. Just add chicken broth!
Regardless of it's fate I'm here to bring you a close second -one you can actually customise with small changes which make this soup something you'll be stoked to make even more than once a week.
The Big Cafeteria's Version of Whole Food's Version of What Thai Chicken Soup Is
First we're gonna grill some chicken. But before we grill that chicken we have to prep that chicken. In my case I'm using two breasts I got in a value pack. I remove them from the pack, rinse with cold water since they've been sitting in some mystery liquid that is not "juice" and pat dry with a towel. Cover the chicken with a big sheet of parchment paper and pound to about an inch in thickness. If you use this method you can pound to whatever density you want but I'm doing it down to about an inch so it takes less time to cook.
Please. Follow good food handling hygiene when working with raw chicken. Cold water rinse and pat dry with paper towel. Towels directly to the trash and rinse hands with hot water. Use a parchment cover because it prevents raw chicken liquid from splattering onto your counter top. Discard used parchment straight to trash and hot water rinse again. I am super OCD about raw chicken handling. Wash things with hot water and wash them immediately. Now that we're past that.
A nice grill pan on the stove is easiest to do the cooking but you could almost do anything here. Leftover roast chicken, chicken from a grill, pre made chicken chunks. The chicken is just here as a protein filler and a key ingredient for making this soup actually really healthy for a lunch. In this recipe I used one whole breast but you can use as much as you like; up to about 8oz worth of chicken. More and it's a little weird. The chicken in this case gets oiled, salted, peppered, and tossed on to a pre-heated-on-high grill pan which I then immediately dial down to medium-high once the meat is on. You can test the pan prior by flicking some water onto it. If the water doesn't bounce or immediately vaporise it's not hot enough yet.
I will admit I do crowd the chicken in this recipe. I know. I just said in Coq au Vin how important crowding is to avoid and here I am. Look, I'm hungry. I just want to get this done. The chicken will be OK because I'm just going for cooking and grill marks, not a perfect brown sear throughout. Just make sure you don't overlap the chicken so it's not cooking.
While you're grilling chicken get all of your vegetables out, washed, and ready to go. Grab a pot and fill it with 24oz of chicken stock or a combination of chicken stock and vegetable stock but not to exceed 50% vegetable. The combination of vegetable stock brings a nice flavour element but not required. Turn the heat on the pot to medium low.
Cut a bell pepper in half (unless you really love bell pepper I guess use the whole thing). Take two lemongrass stalks and use your hand to peel off the first layer. My method is to just cook them whole while you're forming the soup and remove them upon serving but if you want to go through the effort of grating them or something into the soup go for it. The flavour might be more intense tho.. Transfer bell pepper and lemongrass to pot.
Next finely chop two green onions and send them to the pot as well. After the onions prepare a whole carrot by washing and cutting off the top and bottom to clear any ugliness. Rather than chopping the carrot I process it through a cheese grater on a medium-fine grate. In the OG soup from WF both the carrot and ginger are super fine and not a contributor of texture in the soup so I grate it.
Once done with the carrot transfer that to the pot and take about an inch or two of ginger, rip or cut off little nubs, and peel it with a peeler. I suggest ripping off the little nub parts because navigating that with a peeler is super annoying but it's up to you. If you leave them keep the ginger size close to 1" as you don't want to OD on ginger. Once peeled I process the ginger through a microplane. Like I said about the carrot earlier the ginger is very broken down in the OG soup and running it through a microplane allows it to disperse well into the soup if not dissolve somewhat. Transfer the ginger to your face. Oh you're paying attention? Pot.
How is your chicken doing? If it's been 6-8 minutes it's probably ready to flip. I usually flip mine when the edges of the chicken are turning cooked-white. Maybe you should flip it now. Most importantly we don't want burned chicken. That's going to add burned flavour to the soup and why would we want that? If you are nervous you can use a tongs and lift up the chicken and see what's going on. If the chicken is starting to turn cooked-white around the outside edge you're probably near flipping time. Flip as needed to cook thoroughly. When in doubt: 160°F internal and you're good.
The last ingredient now is the spice. For today's preparation I used a hatch chili because they're in season and I had some in the fridge. Normally I use a single seeded jalapeno. You really need to decide what's right for you. If you hate hot spice then I would default to a thai red chile paste -something with a lot of roasty flavour and less direct heat. If you like it medium a seeded jalapeno does the trick. I've made it with a jalapeno + seeds and that pretty volcanic and I enjoyed the soup less. You can also consider some of the variations I note and the end of this recipe which can utilize anything from fermented chile paste to serrano peppers and more.
Since we're basically at the point of getting everything loaded into the soup we need your chicken to be done. Keep in mind if you don't feel like using or don't own an instant-read thermometer you can touch the top of the chicken and get a feel for how soft it is which translates to it's done-ness. You can read all about it on the Internet but there's a bro-style way of checking meat doneness by making a light fist with your hand, then using your other index finger pushing down on the skin/muscle at the very base of your fisted-thumb. That amount of resistance in your skin is something close to a medium on a steak and 'done' on chicken. I regret saying this now because you're probably thinking its stupid or you're going to end up with undercooked chicken and blame me for all your problems. If you cook meat a lot you probably know. If you don't, go get a damn thermometer. I use a Maverick Pro instant read thermometer. It's probably the best and fastest instant read I've ever used and I've lost two and replaced with the same one each time I like it that much. Amazon has them for same day delivery!
Chicken should be 160F degrees at the midpoint of the meat. Remember it's going into boiling hot soup at some point so we're not looking for Michelin star level shit here.
Just the tip: if you buy value packs of boneless, skinless, chicken breast and open one pack you usually have two breasts (as I did in this tutorial). I advise cooking both and saving the other one to use as another lunch tomorrow or the next day. Maybe chop it up and toss it with a salad? Maybe make some pasta and have it as a protein component. I say this mainly because putting the chicken uncooked back into a bag or something and then back into the fridge is gross and asking for (cross) contamination.
So at this point you have cooked chicken and a pot of vegetables and stock that is probably starting to come up to simmer. Good. Let the chicken rest a few minutes or until you can adequately hold on to it and slice it without burning off your fingerprints, then dice it. Transfer to the pot.
The pot needs to come to a boil. Not a simmer. Not steaming. Boiling. Next we're going to measure out 30g of fettucine and 30g of orzo. Orzo, especially, needs to go into boiling water otherwise it's going to take way longer to cook and more likely to stick to the bottom of the pot turning this soup into shit. Don't do that. Add the orzo to the boiling pot and using your hands break the bundle of fettucine into ~2" increments.
Why? Why fettucine? Or why ~2" increments? I'll tell you both.
When being perplexed about the thickness of the OG noodles (as I mentioned many many times before) I had been using linguine which is a slightly narrower version of fettuccine. So, we're using fettuccine because it's the widest most readily available boxed pasta in the store, aside from lasagna obvs. Approximately two inch increments because, again, like the OG soup, they were short pieces of noodles. I'm guessing they used short noodles because in the transport and storage duration of on-the-shelf soup long, full length, noodles might get all tangled and shitty and come out shitty when transferred to a pot for heating. Short noodles lets everything spill out of the box pretty easily so here we are trying to copy it.
Update: I've actually tried a lot of noodle variations with this soup replica. I've done ramen noodles, soba (not cool), udon, linguine (as mentioned), and whole wheat spaghetti. Out of those I've also freshly made linguine and done both the above as ~2" length pieces or sometimes full length noodles. There's really no right and wrong other than some flavour busters. For example the wheat based noodles -soba and whole wheat spaghetti didn't pair well with everything else. But the other stuff was mainly a matter of what you had on hand or what you felt like making and whether you wanted to slurp noodles or have them short enough to fit on a large spoon. Keep in mind the OG soup had those short thick noodles which was nice because you could express a stocky loaded spoonful of soup into your face quite satisfyingly.
If you want to be a real boss go make your own sheet of pasta and run it through your fettuccine attachment at the thickest possible size to really nail this recipe. I haven't done that yet because just about every time I've made this soup I've been hungover and super hungry and no one has time for that shit.
OK, pastas are in the soup, it's still boiling. Tell Siri to set a timer for 10 minutes. Make sure you stir it around about every two minutes as even though you've done everything right so far it's still possible for the pasta to stick on the bottom of the pot. At this point you're probably asking yourself, or me, big cafeteria,
“Where art thou umami?”
Well, it's really up to you on how you want to handle this. Really amazing shoyu is what sets this soup ablaze. It, as always, is a ton of depth in flavour and also the second contributor of salt seasoning to the soup. I use a really nice 1yr aged shoyu I got off Amazon. You can use anything you like but I'll just say make sure it's shoyu and not tamari. Tamari is the wrong flavour if we're considering the OG soup. I use about 1.5oz but I would really suggest you add some, taste the soup, and add more if you like where it's going.
Once ten minutes are up cut the heat, transfer to a large bowl, and KERBOOM. Sùper dope soup.
INGREDIENTS
- 8oz boneless skinless organic chicken breast
- 24oz of stock/broth
- 12oz each of chicken stock and 12oz vegetable stock approximately
- Organic produce
- 1x bell pepper
- 1x carrot
- 1"-2" ginger
- 1x hatch chili or jalapeno
- 30g dry fettuccine noodles
- 30g dry orzo
- 1.5oz or to taste shoyu
Options Trading
As noted throughout the recipe there's a lot of places to take this soup. A few ideas:
- Sub beef for chicken. This takes your soup into traditional beef noodle soup territory. I would actually advise using leftover beef or completely raw beef and boiling it in the stock to bring out some flavour. Probably want to switch to vegetable or beef broth/stock base for this.
- Change your chili source. Jalapenos work constantly but as I did today hatch chilis can be nice. Not quite as hot but still tasty. Serrano peppers can work but keep in mind they are more intense than jalapeno. There's also less intense like anaheim or inferno level like habanero. All about chile type and whether you use the seeds.
- Consider adding chili paste in addition to a main chopped chili source. Chili paste adds depth to dishes and in this case can create a more "rich" or "robust" kind of heat. My Whole Foods has been stocking a Chinese fermented chili paste and it KICKS ASS. It does bring spice but it brings a whole lot of additional flavours which is nice. It's called Mother In Law's Gochujang fermented chile paste. I can't find it online but seems like it might be widely distributed. As I mentioned before Thai red chile paste will add depth but less heat. Generally a good chile paste in addition to beef would be real good too.
- Add or subtract some vegetables. I've tried this by adding mushrooms and it adds a lot of body to the soup especially if you are low on a protein. I've also tried sliced tomatoes and it was OK but tomato really starts to alter the main flavour so you'll have to compensate or just really want tomato flavour. You can also double up on carrots.
- Try adding worcestershire sauce. Start with a little. It will alter both colour and flavor.
- Add limes. If you've had the OG soup you'd know I forgot limes in mine. I've tried adding limes a million times and it always takes the flavour somewhere else. I usually have to compensate with more ginger AND carrot to reign the flavour back in. It really is the lemongrass and lime that I think give the OG product it's "thai" labeling so give it a try but have extra on hand to steer in one direction or another.
