Here’s how to make chicken consomme, a classic, clear French soup. It is the epitome of restraint and elegance, and is versatile in the kitchen. You can use all sorts of other poultry, too, like pheasant, turkey, grouse or quail.

I’ve been making consomme of all types for decades. It’s a fundamental French technique that results in the clearest, most flavorful broth you can imagine. It is the Lady Galadriel of soups: Pure, powerful, achingly beautiful.

There are generally three kinds of consomme: Dark meat, light meat (which includes fish), and vegetable-based. While this recipe is ostensibly for chicken consomme, feel free to use any light meat here. In fact, I used grouse and partridges (plus chicken) for the photos.

What is a Consomme?

OK, I normally hate these “what is?” subheads in recipes, but in this case I think it might be needed. A consomme is a fortified and clarified broth. You start with a regular ole’ broth, in this case a chicken broth or a pheasant broth, even one that has gone cloudy because you boiled it.

Yep, that’s what prompted me to make chicken consomme with this particular batch. I’d taken my eye off my game bird broth, it boiled, the chicken that was in it had fatty skin, that fat particalized and suspended in the stock. Looked terrible, tasted OK.

You can fix a cloudy broth by making a consomme. That’s the clarifying process.

How you get there is with the fortifying process, and there you need a raft.

The Raft

A raft? Yep, a raft. It’s gross-looking combination of vegetables, a little tomato product, the approriate meat, and lots of egg whites. Mix this together with the cold stock, heat slowly and everything coagulates and rises to the top, like a raft.

You then poke a hole in this raft so the broth can simmer for a while, gently, very gently.

After that, you carefully ladle the crystal clear broth through a strainer that has a paper towel set inside it. The result is gorgeous.

You need this raft because even though it’s the egg white that is doing most of the clarification. If you just used egg white, it would steal flavor and color from your original stock, leaving it wan and sad. The added ingredients not only return what the egg whites take, but boost the initial broth.

The Meat

So in a chicken consomme, you will need to add ground chicken to the raft. You can find it in most supermarkets. A pound should do for a normal consomme, but if you want to get crazy, use 2 pounds.

If your initial stock was of, say, partridges, grouse, pheasants, rabbit or somesuch, I’d still use ground chicken in the raft — unless you happen to be swimming in those game meats. Pre-ground chicken is cheaper and easier. Oh, and the meat should be lean. That said, there’s no reason you couldn’t use the same meat of the stock in the consomme.

One caveat: Don’t use turkey or ground turkey — unless you want to make a turkey consomme, which is very good, by the way. The reason is because turkey is strongly flavored, and if you use ground turkey in your raft, it won’t taste like a chicken consomme anymore. If this doesn’t bother you, go for it.

How to Use Chicken Consomme

To me, the classic way to seve chicken consomme is by itself, with maybe a garnish or two. An herb, maybe a dumpling, a shred of meat, a few perfectly diced vegetables.

Don’t overdo it. Consomme is restrained, elegant, spare.

But of course you can use it as a base for any clear soup. I love chicken consomme as the base for tortellini in broth, or for other soups where the broth plays a leading role. You could use it instead of the mushroom broth I use in my recipe for pike soup, for example. Other recipes that would make good use of it would be:

• As a broth for canederli dumplings.
• In the base of my Scottish venison soup.
• Various other “bird soups” like Mexican sopa de lima, or my Scandinavian grouse soup
• With my artichoke and meatball soup, or Sonoran caldo de queso.

Storing

Chicken consomme will keep a week or so in the fridge, and freezes well. You can also pressure can it using the guidelines for pressure canning stock, so 25 minutes at 10 psi, adjusting for altitude.

You might also like my recipe for a darker French consomme, using duck, beef or venison.

If you liked this recipe, please leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating and a comment below; I’d love to hear how everything went. If you’re on Instagram, share a picture and tag me at huntgathercook.