Turnip Chicken Noodle Soup

by | Feb 1, 2022 | Recipes & Foodie Goodies

Turnips — šalqam (شلغم) — are known in Persian cul­ture, spe­cial­ly among elders and those mind­ful of healthy whole-foods and herbal reme­dies, as being rich with immune boost­ing vit­a­mins and min­er­als to nour­ish you with heal­ing pow­ers “like Penicillin” (as the elders say).

This sim­ple soup recipe is a mar­riage of chick­en noo­dle soup from Western cul­tures, and folk wis­dom of Persian cul­ture which val­ues the nat­ur­al nutri­tion prop­er­ties of turnips.

turnips-shalqam

Ingredients:

  • 2 qt. Organic Chicken Broth
  • 1 White onion
  • 2 large or 3 medi­um sized fresh Turnips (šalqam)
  • 1 bunch Cilantro
  • 1 bunch Parsley
  • ≈ 1 lb (1 pack­et) of bone­less skin­less chick­en thigh. (You can also use breast meat and/or oth­er parts, but thigh meat is most nutri­tious meat and keeps it free of bones, car­ti­lage, etc to pick out)
  • 2 – 4 car­rots (This gives it sweet­ness, so vary amount to your taste.)
  • 1 tea­spoon Turmeric
  • Optional: 2 — 6 cloves of Garlic — to your taste and affin­i­ty for gar­lic. The more the hearti­er and more healing.
  • 1.3 oz Pappardelle pas­ta (or sim­i­lar noodles)
  • 1 lemon

Instructions:

  1. Pour 2 quarts (pack­ages) of organ­ic chick­en broth (TJ’s is great) into full size pot, and turn up the heat to prep for com­ing ingredients.
  2. Slice 1 white onion into sliv­ers, and add it to the broth.
  3. Clean turnips and cut off the ends. Chop turnips into ¾ inch wedges, and add to broth mix.
  4. Rinse off the bone­less, skin­less chick­en thigh out of the pack­ag­ing. Add to soup mix.
  5. Wash, then chop the car­rots into ⅓ inch slices.  Add to mix.
  6. Wash and parse the stems off the Cilantro and Parsley. Add to the soup mix.
  7. Add a tea­spoon of tumuric.
  8. Peel and sliced gar­lic. Add to mix.
  9. After chick­en and turnips are ful­ly cooked, tear and pull apart the chick­en into spoon sized pieces along the nat­ur­al grain of the meat. It should come apart eas­i­ly when cooked suf­fi­cient­ly. (Easiest to remove them into a side dish to pull and tease apart, then add them back to the soup.)
  10. Break up 1⅓ oz of pap­pardelle pas­ta into 1 inch pieces. For the last 10 min­utes of active cook­ing, add the pas­ta to be cooked by the sim­mer­ing soup. Juice 1 lemon into the soup, as the pas­ta absorbs the juices of the mix.
  11. Let the soup sim­mer and set. Then enjoy it before it’s all gone. And make anoth­er batch as needed.

Update (Dec 2022):

Try adding some fresh chopped gin­ger or 2 to 4  cubes Trader Joe’s Dorot Garden’s frozen crushed gin­ger.

Post script:

According to Wikipedia, there is a rich source of nutri­ents in the green leafs of the turnip greens, though most gro­cery stores tend to cut them off and don’t pro­vide them as such. I believe that the list­ing may have missed (or ignored) the full extent of nutri­ents in the root. Nevertheless, the infor­ma­tion is an inter­est­ing and valu­able perspective.

Boiled green leaves of the turnip top (“turnip greens”) pro­vide 84 kilo­joules (20 kilo­calo­ries) of food ener­gy in a ref­er­ence serv­ing of 100 grams (3+1⁄2 oz), and are 93% water, 4% car­bo­hy­drates, and 1% pro­tein, with neg­li­gi­ble fat (table). The boiled greens are a rich source (more than 20% of the Daily Value, DV) par­tic­u­lar­ly of vit­a­min K (350% DV), with vit­a­min A, vit­a­min C, and folate also in sig­nif­i­cant con­tent (30% DV or greater, table). Boiled turnip greens also con­tain sub­stan­tial lutein (8440 micro­grams per 100 g).

In a 100-gram ref­er­ence amount, boiled turnip root sup­plies 92 kJ (22 kcal), with only vit­a­min C in a mod­er­ate amount (14% DV). Other micronu­tri­ents in boiled turnip are in low or neg­li­gi­ble con­tent (table). Boiled turnip is 94% water, 5% car­bo­hy­drates, and 1% pro­tein, with neg­li­gi­ble fat.
 — Wikipedia, Turnip — Nutrition