Upgrade Chicken Soup With This Bold Addition Already In Your Liquor Cabinet

Chicken soup is endlessly versatile. Brothy or more like stew, with rice or noodles, creamy, or spicy, every chef (whether professional or otherwise) has a little something extra they add to the pot. Emeril Lagasse has a game-changing way to elevate chicken noodle soup and this secret golden spice will add extra flavor. A dash or two of buffalo hot sauce will turn your soup into something straight out of Buffalo Wild Wings, and some coconut milk will transport you to Thailand. You could eat your way around the world using chicken soup made with different regional spices and sauces. But there's also a secret spirit you can add — a little vodka to upgrade every batch.

We're obsessed with the perfect bowl of chicken soup here at The Takeout, so we reached out to an expert for ideas on how to really make those comforting flavors shine. Katie Vine, experienced cook and recipe blogger at Dinners Done Quick pointed to the bold spirit as a way to enhance all kinds of flavors in chicken soup. "Vodka itself doesn't taste like much, but it makes other things taste more vibrant. In particular, herbs (like) parsley, alliums (like) onion and garlic, and black pepper dissolve better into the liquids and shine more vibrantly when vodka is incorporated, leading to a more flavorful soup overall," Vine said.

Any kind of regular, unflavored vodka will deepen the flavor profile of your homemade chicken soup, but avoid lower-quality brands that can carry harsh or more astringent flavors. Instead, go for a clean and smooth vodka like Titos or Belvedere (make yourself a chicken broth cocktail while you're at it) and put the booze into your soup early on in the cooking process. "Add it in with your broth, so it has plenty of time to cook out the alcohol and let the flavors build and blend," Katie Vine told The Takeout.

Add about ½ of a cup of vodka to a pot of chicken soup to enhance the flavor, and be sure to keep the heat on the lower side. Soup cooked too hot won't have enough time for flavors to blend and the vodka could burn off before it works its magic. Keeping that burner on low will also reduce the chance of the liquor igniting (keep a pan lid on hand, just in case), which is always a bit of a possibility when you're cooking with alcohol.