I haven’t been feeling well lately, suffering from sinusitis and an ear infection, so I’ve been craving something hot to help my body recover quickly.
It is said that chicken soup has anti-inflammatory properties, so Sam and I decided to challenge ourselves by making a whole chicken soup—the kind where an entire chicken is actually in the pot!
Making a truly impressive chicken soup is actually quite a hassle. If you’re making the “Tori Paitan” (creamy chicken broth) used in ramen, you have to simmer a pot of broth first, then mince the chicken meat and boil it with the original broth a second time. As for the clear chicken soup served in high-end hotels, word has it they use two chickens: the first is just for the broth and isn’t meant to be eaten, while the second is the one actually served. Since we were just making a “home-style” (?) version, we decided to stick with one chicken from start to finish.
When we went to the supermarket, we found there weren’t many choices on the shelf—just two types:
Air-chilled chicken : All the giblets were cleaned out, but the chickens were on the smaller side.
Conventionally processed chicken: Much larger, but still had some giblets inside.
(Guess which one we chose?)
After thinking it over, we felt that if we were going to stew it, we might as well go big. So, we headed home with that large, round ball of a chicken in its plastic bag.
After giving the chicken a “spa” wash, hero Sam put on gloves and fished the head and giblets out of its belly (nothing can stop a foodie!). We then rinsed the chicken thoroughly, inside and out. Next, we boiled a pot of water and gingerly lowered the chicken in (it was actually quite precarious—the chicken was so big and our pot so small that we almost scalded ourselves). After blanching it for two minutes, we lifted it out and placed it into the inner pot of the electric rice cooker.
Next, we added ginger slices, soaked shiitake, and some garlic to the inner pot. We took the water used for blanching, added a bit of rice wine, salt, sugar, and Shaoxing wine, and poured it in along with the mushroom soaking liquid. After sealing it tight with aluminum foil, it was ready to be steamed in the cooker!
We put two cups of water in the outer pot, let it pop, added two more cups, and when it popped again, we had this perfect pot of chicken soup.
I had a bowl, and the flavor was delicious! It was even better than some of the chicken soups you get at restaurants. The essence released by the mushrooms and the chicken made the broth incredibly rich and complex. If I were in an anime, there would probably be beams of light shooting out from the soup right now, with chickens dancing happily behind me 🐔🐔🐔.
And then, quite decadently, we used this clear, golden broth as a base for hot pot.
NB: This article was first published in Chinese on 02/09/26. It was later translated with assistance from AI tools, edited by me, and published in English on 02/10/26.