Arabaşı: Yozgat-Style Chicken Soup with Set Dough

Put the chicken, onion and carrot in a pot with 2 liters of cold water. Heat over medium until it boils, skimming off the foam that collects on top for a clear broth. Reduce the heat, leave the lid slightly ajar and simmer just below a boil for 45–50 minutes. Insert a thermometer into the thickest part of the chicken without touching the bone; it must read at least 74°C / 165°F. The meat should also pull easily from the bone when cooked.

Remove the chicken and vegetables with a strainer. Strain the broth through a fine-mesh sieve and measure it; add hot water as needed to reach 1.8 liters. Once the chicken is cool enough to handle, remove the skin and bones and shred the meat. Leave out the skin; its fat disperses through the broth and cannot be skimmed off.

In a separate pot, whisk 260 g of flour into 500 ml of cold water until no lumps remain. The flour must be mixed with cold water; adding it to hot water makes it clump immediately. Add a pinch of salt and cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, for 15–20 minutes. It is ready when thick and pulling away from the sides of the pot in one mass.

Pour the hot dough onto a wet tray and smooth it to a thickness of 1.5–2 cm with a wet spatula. Leave uncovered and cool completely at room temperature for at least 2 hours, preferably overnight in the refrigerator. The dough cannot be cut before it cools; it will stick to the knife and the diamond-shaped pieces will fall apart. This cooling time is not included in the recipe’s cooking time.

Melt the butter in a pot, add the flour and cook for 2–3 minutes, until fragrant; otherwise the soup may taste of raw flour. Add the tomato paste and optional hot pepper paste and cook for 1 minute more. Gradually whisk in the hot chicken broth without removing the pot from the heat; adding it all at once will cause lumps. Add the shredded chicken, salt, black pepper and Turkish red pepper flakes. Boil for 8–10 minutes.

Cut the cooled, set dough into 2 × 2 cm cubes with a wet knife. Set out two bowls: one with hot soup and one with the dough cubes. The traditional way to eat the soup and dough is to put a piece of dough on the spoon, dip it in the soup and swallow it without chewing. Serve the plate of dough cold and the soup piping hot.