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The Chicken Soup Manifesto: Recipes from around the world
Celebrating the universal joy of chicken soup.
This is a celebration of one of the most widely interpreted, and beloved dishes the world over. With more than 100 recipes dedicated to this one special, often humble, meal, James Beard-nominee Jenn Louis shows readers how chicken soup is not only a source of heart-warming sustenance, but also a cure-all and the ultimate expression of love.
With chapters broken down by region and country, The Chicken Soup Manifesto includes everything from Algerian Chorba Bayda, Colombian and Panamanian Sancocho and Thai Kao Tom Gai to Spanish Sopa de Picadillo. Along with the recipes, Jenn also covers essential chicken know-how, from selecting and storing, to stock 101 and brining. The book is fully photographed with a design that establishes it as a collectible object as much as a hard-working guide to the world's favorite soup.
This is a celebration of one of the most widely interpreted, and beloved dishes the world over. With more than 100 recipes dedicated to this one special, often humble, meal, James Beard-nominee Jenn Louis shows readers how chicken soup is not only a source of heart-warming sustenance, but also a cure-all and the ultimate expression of love.
With chapters broken down by region and country, The Chicken Soup Manifesto includes everything from Algerian Chorba Bayda, Colombian and Panamanian Sancocho and Thai Kao Tom Gai to Spanish Sopa de Picadillo. Along with the recipes, Jenn also covers essential chicken know-how, from selecting and storing, to stock 101 and brining. The book is fully photographed with a design that establishes it as a collectible object as much as a hard-working guide to the world's favorite soup.
240 pages, Hardcover
Published September 1, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 19, 2020
The good: You'll find simple recipes for soups that you've never heard of before.
The bad: This book isn't nearly as in-depth as I hoped, and there are some omissions (and possible errors?) that are just odd. One negative is that ingredients that aren't commonly found in American or British kitchens aren't explained at all. One example is mastic, an ingredient in one of the Egyptian soups. The recipe calls for 1oz, which seems WILD, because that amount would cost about $20 from my source, and recipes for the same soup online call for 1-2 individual rocks of mastic--that's like 1/20th of an oz if not less. And if you didn't know what mastic was you wouldn't find out anything about it, where to buy it, that it's often ground before use, or how to store it from this book. There are also less common spice blends, like a Georgian one, that are listed as ingredients but we aren't given recipes on how to make them. I shouldn't have to google "Georgian spice blend recipe" to make a soup from a contemporary cookbook. The recipes themselves are very simple, to the extent that some of the recipes are shorter than the introductory paragraphs about them. I also recently bought the cookbook Bibi's Kitchen, and how I wish this book had been more like that! Similarly, Bibi's Kitchen contains recipes from different countries and provided by different sources, but there we get in-depth descriptions of ingredients including multiple online sources for them and tips on where to find them locally, info about the history or cultural significance of the recipe itself, really well-written recipes, and descriptive intro paragraphs that really make you want to make that recipe. I'd hope that a cookbook so focused on one main idea would be more involved. I'll be keeping this cookbook, but I'll also be doing extra research into the recipes before I make them, something I don't normally do with cookbooks. The cookbook and recipes just do not lead me to really trust the author. I made the Egyptian "bird's tongue soup," getting the idea from this book and the actual recipe from two blogs written by Egyptian people. The recipe I ended up using had more spices, the correct amount of mastic, and it gave a more involved method of marinating the chicken before simmering it for stock/meat. It's too bad about the book, because I had high hopes!
The bad: This book isn't nearly as in-depth as I hoped, and there are some omissions (and possible errors?) that are just odd. One negative is that ingredients that aren't commonly found in American or British kitchens aren't explained at all. One example is mastic, an ingredient in one of the Egyptian soups. The recipe calls for 1oz, which seems WILD, because that amount would cost about $20 from my source, and recipes for the same soup online call for 1-2 individual rocks of mastic--that's like 1/20th of an oz if not less. And if you didn't know what mastic was you wouldn't find out anything about it, where to buy it, that it's often ground before use, or how to store it from this book. There are also less common spice blends, like a Georgian one, that are listed as ingredients but we aren't given recipes on how to make them. I shouldn't have to google "Georgian spice blend recipe" to make a soup from a contemporary cookbook. The recipes themselves are very simple, to the extent that some of the recipes are shorter than the introductory paragraphs about them. I also recently bought the cookbook Bibi's Kitchen, and how I wish this book had been more like that! Similarly, Bibi's Kitchen contains recipes from different countries and provided by different sources, but there we get in-depth descriptions of ingredients including multiple online sources for them and tips on where to find them locally, info about the history or cultural significance of the recipe itself, really well-written recipes, and descriptive intro paragraphs that really make you want to make that recipe. I'd hope that a cookbook so focused on one main idea would be more involved. I'll be keeping this cookbook, but I'll also be doing extra research into the recipes before I make them, something I don't normally do with cookbooks. The cookbook and recipes just do not lead me to really trust the author. I made the Egyptian "bird's tongue soup," getting the idea from this book and the actual recipe from two blogs written by Egyptian people. The recipe I ended up using had more spices, the correct amount of mastic, and it gave a more involved method of marinating the chicken before simmering it for stock/meat. It's too bad about the book, because I had high hopes!
May 26, 2026
I really have enjoyed this book. It inspires me to try soups from countries I wouldn't normally try. (Hello, Bhutan!) So far they're all delicious. The only issue is that the ingredient list is for some reason in teeny tiny font.
November 1, 2020
A great cookbook.
June 9, 2022
Missing some countries I expected,but included others that were a pleasant surprise
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews