Help! Why Did My Chicken Soup Turn Into Jell-o? (2024)

FAQs

Help! Why Did My Chicken Soup Turn Into Jell-o? ›

When you simmer a fresh chicken — complete with bones, skin, and meat — you extract the collagen from the bones. This collagen in the bones is what is causing your soup to gel. It's completely natural, and it only happens in rich, well-made chicken stock. It can be a little freaky, though, if you're not expecting it!

A gelatinous, wiggly chicken stock just means much of the collagen has been extracted from your chicken bones — which is a good thing, and what you should be aiming for.

That's because some cuts of meat and some bones contain more collagen than others. The more collagen-rich ingredients you add to your pot, the more gelatinous your broth will be.

The bad news is that it's a coagulated concoction of fat, protein, and water that has been forming inside the chicken, which you've just released through heat. The same cause of this goo is also responsible for the foam that can form on top of chicken stock.

Many sauce and soup recipes need to be reduced and thickened, which means gently simmering to achieve the desired consistency. With sauces and soups that contain milk, boiling or simmering can cause the milk to curdle.

With cooking, some collagen denatures (gelatinises) into gelatine which dissolves in the marrow juices and thickens it. If the cooked chicken is chilled, the gelatine sets the juices to the pink jelly that is often encountered with cold chicken.

Sear or roast your potatoes to prevent gummy soup

Searing or roasting your potatoes does more than just add extra flavor to your soup. It can actually prevent your broth from becoming gluey.

Bone broth creates a jelly consistency when it cools down, so you can scoop it out with a spoon. It gels up like this because of the gelatin it contains. Gelatin is basically a cooked form of collagen. Simmering your bones in water to make broth extracts collagen from the bones and cooks it into gelatine.

The gelatin in bone broth supports healthy digestion. It may be beneficial for individuals with leaky gut, as well as irritable and inflammatory bowel diseases.

Broth scum is simply denatured congealed protein. It comes from the meat, not the bones. It's not gelatin, which dissolves. It's mostly the same proteins that make up egg whites.

Why is there a blob in my chicken broth? ›

Bubbling to the surface are rogue proteins that have seeped out of the meat, bones, and higher-protein vegetables and coagulated due to heat.

Eating chicken broth that was left unrefrigerated for three weeks can indeed increase the risk of foodborne illness. The fact that the pot roast was cooked for 30 minutes at 400 degrees helps reduce the risk a bit, but there's still a possibility of harmful bacteria surviving.

A general rule of thumb is that soup can be stored in the refrigerator for about three days, but you should always taste your dish before deciding to reheat. A clear, vegetable-based soup with some acidity, such as tomatoes, may last longer. Chicken soup usually lasts three to five days.

BUT: The sign of the 'jelly' is what lets you know you've cooked the bones long enough, you've not used too much water, and you've used bones that have high gelatin in them. Gelatinous bone broth is the visual sign (when it's wobbly once cooled in fridge) that you've got a great amount of gelatin in there.

Add 1/4 cup boiling water to the curdled sauce, wisk gently, and repeat until sauce is smoothed out. Re-season and serve promptly. This isn't a 100% cure but if throwing out the sauce isn't an option then boiling hot water is the closest thing to a fix you can get. The sauce with milk turned into Curds and oil.

Appearance: Mold is a sure sign your homemade or store-bought broth is bad. Mold grows on the broth's surface or has a curdled or slimy texture, it should not be consumed.

The white stuff coming out of chicken as it cooks is simply extra protein that dissolves in water and is forced out of the meat by heat. Food scientist Topher McNeil, PhD, explains, “The [chicken] muscles themselves actually contract and squeeze out the liquid that's in between muscle cells.”

It's called “aspic.” It's highly nutritious because it's the collagen/gelatin that has rendered from the bones and joints, and it's full of vitamins, minerals, and amino acids. When heated, it becomes a thick, silky soup base that is wonderful when you're well and absolutely divine when you are sick.

Collagen is also produced by boiling the marrow calf bone for at least 12 hours or more, the more we boil it, the more collagen comes out. In this way, marrow bone broth becomes jelly-like. If the jelly consistency is not achieved, it means that the collagen has not been released.