Shooba: Middle Eastern chicken, meatball and rice soup

Shooba is the David family’s contribution to the plethora of comforting, soul-satisfying chicken soup recipes. Everyone loves their best. This is ours. It is a delicious Lebanese-Syrian chicken and rice soup with beef meatballs in homemade stock seasoned with osfor, a Middle Eastern spice that adds that little something extra that makes it so very special. Can you make this soup without the osfor? I would guess so but it will be lacking the magic. Can you make this soup with saffron? Whelp, yes, I would guess but that’s going to be expensive and will taste nothing like Shooba. It would be saffooba. Saffron and osfo are alike in color only.

We are fortunate to live in an area where I can pick up osfor at the Mediterranean Bakery & Cafe which also sells the most delicious warm pita and in-house hummus and tabbouleh and every other wonderful Middle Eastern delicacy and sweet you can imagine. I digress. Big shocker. This chicken soup recipe is a family treasure and really does need the osfor. I recommend hunting down a local grocer who carries it and make nicey-nice with them … Most LOVE to share their culture, foods and recipes. If that’s not possible, there’s always the google machine to help.

Shooba sits firmly in my Christmas memory bank. While there must have been times Mom made this soup other than Christmas Day, I’m hard-pressed to remember when she may have. This is the soup that originally was served to us five heathen kids between Christmas morning and dinner when all the extended family descended on our house. Bunny would make all of the components in advance and then put them together to bubble gently on the stove until it was time to eat.

As everyone got older and could feed themselves, Shooba became the soup course for the even larger extended family who would descend on the house. The soup pot would be ready for them on the stove with bowls and spoons off to the side. People would help themselves and Mom would refresh the pot with extra chicken or meatballs, maybe rice or stock, depending on how many were eating and if that (or those) certain meatball lover(s) was (were) in high gear. Sister Mary Alice would have shredded that sentence in one of her evil grammar trees. I feel happily naughty.

Even with the snack table covered in plates of Italian meats and cheeses, sliced breads, and bowls of Boursin and crackers for nibbling, most people went for the Shooba first. Nobody doesn’t like it (to abuse a double-negative). Lovely family memories aside, this soup is easy to make, economical, expands easily to feed a crowd (even mid service if you’ve got the components available), and can be made a day or two in advance or longer if you put the parts into the freezer separately.

I do hope you give it a try.

The recipe broken down into its components

The Broth

Like most chicken soup recipes, the chicken is cooked with onion, carrots, celery, parsley stems, garlic, salt and peppercorns. This gives you not only the star of this chicken soup recipe but also the stock/broth. If you’re feeding a crowd or just want to be sure your soup will feed all your diners, keep a box or two of low-sodium organic chicken stock on hand to supplement. If you’ve got homemade in the freezer, even better but not necessary.

This is my stock clarification station. If you’ve got an easier way, please feel free to let me know but I kind of think it’s genius. In a Nutty Professor (Jerry Lewis) kind of way. I strain all the big bigs through a colander large enough to hold the chicken carcass (post-picking) and veg into my popcorn bowl. Don’t judge. Small house; double duty vessels.

The next step is to hold the colander up long enough for all the goodness to drain into the bowl. I put the mostly drained colander over a dinner plate to catch any last drips of deliciousness while I then take my big bowl of first-strained broth and carefully pour it back into the wiped out stock pot by way of a fine mesh strainer. There is nothing less pleasant than biting into a wayward peppercorn. I don’t care how long they cook, it’ll terrorize your tastebuds and possibly chip a tooth. Then I toss all the detritus into the trash can, pour the bits on the dinner plate into the pot and carry on with the recipe. And the fourteen dishes that need washing that I’ve added to my day.

The meatballs

These meatballs are simply seasoned with salt and pepper, rolled into 1-2 tsp sized balls and roasted off before being plopped into the soup. There’s something about their meaty flavor and their texture that really add something to this soup. Please note there are unabashed meatball hoovers in the world. They like a good ratio of the orbs in their soup. For this reason, you really need to keep their size to about Hershey Kiss size (yes, everything in my world revolves around chocolate). I’d say a large marble but I’m not so sure people nowadays (me included) know exactly how large that is. My uniformity-lacking self gladly uses a mini scoop for this job. Not only does it keep them all the same size without much thought on your part, it makes the doling and the rolling go pretty quickly.

Oh, and if you’re scrub-averse like me (believe it or not), foil the pan before you oil the pan and the clean up will be a breeze.

The osfor aka the Magic

Osfor (also spelled usfur and asfar) is a Middle Eastern spice – the dried petals of the safflower flower – that have an earthy subtle foavor that also give your broth an orange hue. I’ve spent a bit of time trying to think of how to describe the flavor and I just can’t. It’s like trying to describe oregano or marjoram. I can’t. Please trust me that the flavor it imparts, without slapping you in the forehead with its presence, adds that certain something that makes Shooba Shooba. Just now channeling Mr. Sinatra’s crooning voice. Shooba Shooba DOOOO. Nobody here is impressed. Whatevs.

For fun I put a picture of osfor on my Instagram Story and asked people to guess the secret ingredient. I did get a few odd responses to which I universally reply (1) I am married so … no thanks; (2) NO, I do not want to see any part of your anatomy; and (3) I don’t want to buy your Instagram followers, thankeevurramush. People have a bit of time on their hands.

Back to the Story… most legitimate responses were saffron. This makes sense because osfor looks a lot like saffron at first glance. However, they are not interchangeable. Osfor is the dried petals of a safflower. It has a mild flavor so you need a healthy tablespoon in this recipe. Saffron is the stigma and styles of a certain crocus. It is quite aromatic so you generally need no more than a pinch in most recipes. Osfor, while difficult to find if you aren’t near a Middle Eastern or spice shop, is not expensive. Saffron, real saffron is quite expensive.

So, no, even if you’re Richie Rich, saffron is not a suitable substitute. Though makes a fantabulous tadig … drooling.

If you can’t find/get osfor, just omit it. But do know that that certain something, that culinary je ne sais quoi will be absent.

Rice

Not the sexiest note to end on but this sleeper ingredient is muy importante. Please use plain old long grain rice. Not jasmine, not stubby risotto rice. Just plain white rice. Think Uncle Ben’s in the box. That, in fact, is what my mother always uses. I will branch out but never to the fancy grains and never to the brown rice. I love a good brown rice but I’ve never found it to work here. Feel free to experiment but you have been warned. Also, rice expands. A lot. This is great if you need to feed a hungrier bunch. Just add more rice (with an equivalent amount of broth or stock) and you can easily stretch this soup to feed the gang.

Miscellany

This recipe feeds 6-10 people. Yes, that’s a spectrum… but I HATE estimating servings because it depends on the appetite of your crowd and what else is being served. And myriad other factors. Feel free, nay please DO make extras of everything if you’re not sure. Two chickens?! Use two pots to cook them if your stock pot isn’t big enough. Or do one after the other. You can never have too much stock or ready-to-eat chicken meat. Freezes like a charm.

The meatballs are just as easy to make in a double or triple batch (no, I am not kidding. Didn’t I mention the Meatball Hoovers in the family). Just increase the salt and pepper (1 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp ground pepper per pound) and scootch them together on the sheetpan. As long as they don’t touch, they’ll cook just fine.

And rice comes in a one pound package (or larger) so you can always add extra (allow to cook completely before letting anyone dig in!). You can also par-cook the rice to keep it from absorbing as much broth which can also stretch a batch to feed the masses.

Finally, while these components can all be made in advance. Don’t put the soup together until about an hour before you plan on serving. That gives half-an-hour to cook the rice and then half an hour for all the parts to say howdy and make nicey-nice.

If you do grace your kitchen with this most delicious chicken soup recipe, please drop me a comment below and/or on Instagram @piecrustandpasta and #piecrustandpasta. Much appreciated!