Chicken soup with broccoli and misua

It’s the same basic chicken and misua soup but without tomatoes. I have also added broccoli florets, the pared and sliced stem of the broccoli, and carrots. I used beef broth instead of chicken broth, having been simmering a pot of bones all afternoon.

What’s the idea? Nothing, really, except that I already had two cooked chicken breasts — I boiled the breasts that I cut off from the chickens that I grilled a few days ago — and there were a lot of vegetables in the fridge because hubby came home yesterday from a four-day conference in Baguio with a sack of veggies and fruits. With all that within access, I figured that chicken and misua soup with added colors, textures and flavors seemed so much more interesting than plain chicken and misua soup. If you think that broccoli is only good with stir fried dishes, this soup might just make you change your mind.

Ingredients :

2 chicken breasts, boiled, deboned and the meat torn into chunks
8 cups of broth (beef, pork, chicken, duck — whatever you have)
1 onion
1 carrot
1 medium sized broccoli
3 rolls of misua noodles
patis
pepper

Cooking procedure :

First of all, there is an assumption here that you are using a flavorful broth — one that had been simmered with spices and aromatics including whole heads of garlic. For details on making homemade broth, click here. If you’re using canned broth and aren’t sure about its quality, you may want to add some garlic to your chicken and misua soup. The thing here is that you’re making a light and delicate soup and you don’t really want very strong flavors.

Trim the broccoli. Cut the head into florets. If your broccoli came with the stem, cut off the hard outer layer of the stem until you only have the soft, light green portion. Slice or dice, whichever shape you prefer.

Peel and thinly slice the onion and carrot.

Heat the broth. Add the onion and bring to the boil. Add the chicken, broccoli stem and carrot, season with patis and pepper and bring to the boil once more. Add the broccoli florets and the rolls of misua. When the soup reaches the boiling point once more, turn off the heat, cover and leave for three minutes. Serve at once.

Notes: There is no need to simmer misua. In fact, I strongly advise against it because simmering will only release the starch from the noodles. If you let the misua cook in the hot broth with the heat off, the noodles will nor turn soggy.

Three minutes is just about right to cook both the broccoli and the misua. While the misua won’t suffer if left in the hot broth for several minutes longer (even for as long as 10 minutes, so long as the heat is off), the broccoli will get overcooked. If you want to be sure that the broccoli is cooked just right according to your preference, eat a floret after three minutes. If you want it softer, cover the pan and leave the soup for another two to three minutes.