Iraqi Chicken Soup "Teshribah"

So this morning my younger brother woke up extremely sick and asked if I could make him Soup or "Teshribah" as most Iraqi's would call it, which is basically a flavorful chicken broth based soup made with very few ingredients and uses little to no time at all to make.

The bases of this Soup or Teshribah is Chicken or Lamb, Onions, Potatoes, and Chickpeas, however I wont be using any Potatoes or Chickpeas. I'll be sticking with a very simple base of Chicken, Broth, Onion, and Vermicelli noodles that i'll be adding at the end.

For this particular batch of soup, I've decided to use cut up Chicken thighs because the bones of the Chicken add more flavor to the broth. 

One whole chopped Spanish Onion (or any Onion of your choosing.)

Vermicelli noodles

and spices such as Turmeric, Curry, Cumin, Salt, and Pepper. 

Dried lemon (ground or whole) is also highly recommend, You can try finding dried lemon at Indian/Middle Eastern stores, however if you can't find it at a store near you, then I wouldn't worry too much about it.

To get started on The Soup you must first saute your veggies in Olive oil, I wont be using any veggies today because I'm sticking with the basic soup and so I'll only be Sauteing my onions, but you can choose to put any veggies you'd like ex: Celery, Carrots, Zucchini, Potatoes, etc.

After your chicken has developed some color, make sure to add your spices, I don't typically follow certain measurements however I believe that a little goes along way and so it's best to add no more than a tbs of all your spices with the exception of salt and pepper, a good tip my Mother gave me is to wait until the very end to add your salt that way you wont end up over salting your food.

Another good tip for measuring is using a typical soup bowl to measure out how much water you'll be adding, ask yourself how many bowls will probably be served? and then fill the pot with the amount of bowls that will be served using the soup bowl. However, you may need to refill the pot later on because water typically gets absorbed very quickly and you want to have a good watery consistency for soup. 

I just wanted to talk about Vermicelli noodles and why I chose to use this type of noodle rather than egg noodles which is used in the typical American chicken soup, Vermicelli noodles are more thin and typically less starchy then egg noodles which can really thicken the soup and like I said we need more of a broth rather then a thick stew, so that's why we use this type of noodle, it's also best to add it towards the end when your chicken is cooked because its thin and small, it doesn't need very much cooking time. 

If Teshribah will be your only meal for the day, then I also recommend adding Bulgur Kubah, it's Bulgur wheat dough stuffed with ground beef, parsley, pine nuts, and onion. I like to help my Mother make a huge batch of this type of Kubbah and then we freeze it, whenever I'm not in the mood to cook for everyone, I just pull out a few and let them thaw out for awhile before adding them into my soups. 

After an hour of your Teshribah boiling away on medium-low, make sure to check to see if the chicken is fully cooked? If so, taste the broth to check if you need to add more spices and if you feel like it's finished, serve it in a soup bowl and eat it like so. Iraqi's typically eat Teshribah with Pita bread, Rice, or Samoon and I can't describe how amazing it is... 

I hope that you'll try this very traditional yet simple Iraqi dish and please feel free to comment and suggest any type of dish you'd like to see.