Clear Chicken Soup

Gregg Germain Asks...
Ruth Abrams Replies
Lois's Suggestions
Gerry Strey Says...
Greg White Adds...

Gregg Germain Asks...
Ok what I want to know is:
What is a decent recipe for good, CLEAR chicken soup?
I've made chicken soup a zillion times with various levels of water, different parts of chicken, spices, etc.
They all tasted just great but none of them had that delightful clarity of the soup me mother made. Mine turned out opaque with zillions of bits of chicken swimming in it.
Overcooked?
What's the deal?

Ruth Abrams Replies
What the heck do I, a vegetarian, know about making chicken soup? Well, a little. I've even made it once, for my father when he was ill, though I stopped eating it years ago. I have many recipes for no-chicken clear savory yellow soup, because it's hard not to have a medium for noodles and dumplings.
My mom, who is not the greatest cook, makes a nice clear chicken soup by removing all the chicken pieces and vegetables once the chicken is cooked. She also cools the soup overnight in the fridge and then makes me hold the strainer to pour the soup through to get the fat out. The soup is pleasant to eat, if a little bland--steaming hot, with some salt and pepper.
She used to use the fat for gribenes (onions fried in rendered chicken fat) or for matzo balls, but now we just throw it away. (Rendered chicken fat, ecstasy or heart attack in a jar?) She makes the cooked chicken into a chicken salad with mayonnaise, walnuts, celery and grapes. My mom likes food to be crunchy!
If you want the soup to have a good taste, use lots of vegetables. If you want it to be yellow, use carrots. If you want it to taste very chicken-y, cook the (cleaned) chicken feet in the soup. That's what my friend's Rumanian grandmother always did--I think she actually went to the kosher slaughterer on Coventry Rd. in Cleveland Heights so she could get the feet.
Anyway, if you strain the soup it should come out all clear. I wish you could ask your mom whether she did that and just didn't tell you--food is important, it lets us know people in a way that not even books can.

Lois's Suggestions
You could try egg/clarifying methods.
Or you could wrap the chicken and other offenders in cheesecloth, tied up with a string, before dropping it in the liquid, and remove the package when the "good" has been extracted.
Or you could give in to soup with all the good bits. Try a hand-wand blender directly in the soup to emulsify the whole thing evenly, add some cream or sour cream just before serving, stir it all up, and eat opaque.

Gerry Strey Says
Be sure to cook it very slowly--the liquid should barely tremble. A full boil will result in murky stock. Leave the lid of the pot ajar if necessary. And if you put rice or noodles in the soup, cook them separately and then add them.
Not that I bother--my chicken soup is cooked at a regular bubble, and the rice goes in at the same time as the fresh vegetables, producing a cloudy and ever so slightly viscous soup that I find perfectly satisfying.

Greg White Adds
Boil a chicken for a few hours. I generally pull the first chicken and repeat with another one for a double stock. Strain the resulting stock and refrigerate. Once the fat congeals, remove it. Now for the trick: reheat the stock to a slow simmer and add parsley mixed with egg whites. This will form a "raft" and clarify the stock.
BTW, I save the fat and use it to saute whatever I'm using in the soup. Wonderful flavor.