Pregno Journo: Nourishing chicken essence

I try my best to eat well during the pregnancy to ensure that sufficient nutrients get passed on to Bun.  Friends also shared that I should take nourishing tonics during my pregnancy to boost energy levels.  My philosophy is to take everything in moderation so I try not to go overboard with ‘pumping’ the body with too much nutrients.

One hearty and yet seemingly simple soup that I had wanted to try is making Chicken Essence from scratch.  S has been taking it throughout her pregnancy and shared that it was really nourishing.  I was eager to try and make some on my own for I could hardly stomach the bottled chicken essence even before I was pregnant.  To me, it had a funky smell and I would gag whenever I tried to drink it.

What exactly is Chicken Essence and are there health benefits for drinking it?  Chicken essence is made up of juice from the bones and meat of a chicken.  Using the double-boil method in medium to high temperature for about 2-3 hours to extract the entire essence of the chicken to produce this nutritional supplement that contains little or no cholesterol if fats and skin are removed. It’s also been said to relieve fatigue, increase metabolism  and promote healing.  It’s also helps to support health and gives the body a boost of energy.

S shared some advice on how to make the Chicken Essence.  I also found this online recipe provided by JewelPie pretty useful so printed the steps out for the mil and the helper to look at while preparing the soup.  When I got home from work, I was excited to check out how the dish turned out.

The double-boil process.

Next, removing the smashed up chicken meat and the bones.  Check out how shriveled the meat has become.  According to the mil, they spent time in the kitchen smashing the meat up.  As we removed the chicken pieces from the bowl, we didn’t see any chicken essence and we thought the recipe didn’t work.

But when we lifted the smaller bowl, the chicken essence was unveiled.  🙂  S also advised that the Chicken Essence is best consumed in the day.  But I wanted to give it a try so thought it would be no harm to take half a bowl at dinner time.  I was so wrong!  It screwed up my body clock and I ended up not being able to sleep.  😦

As for the remaining half a bowl of the Chicken Essence, I brought to work in this hot pink flask recently purchased at the Tangs sale.  Very frivolous I know!!  But I figured that the dollar will be stretched since I can know bring hot soups to work and when Bun start on semi-solids, the flask will be of good use.  So it’s an investment! 😉

Yum!!  If you are wondering what’s left of the chicken meat?  Best not for the pregnant mum to have it.  I’ve read that the chicken pieces can either be used to cook chicken porridge for the rest of the family members or used for chicken stock.