… nothing better when you are feeling low and ill. And there’s nothing better for your bank balance that making a meal from scraps and leftovers.
It’s flu season and people are dropping like flies. What we need is soup.. chicken soup. Apparently it really does work!
First thing, get your chicken. Now you can do this with a whole, raw chicken, of course, but I use up the carcass of a roasted chicken.
See, there’s still some chicken on there… there’s the bones and the skin. They are just waiting to be turned into delicious soup to soothe you and make you better.
You’ll need some vegetables for the stock… a leek, say and a carrot or two
Put them in a large pot and strip your chicken from the bones…. tear off the spare chicken and leave the carcass
See? There’s a good bowl full of chicken shreds there
Put the chicken carcass and whatever bits of skin and so on that are left in the pot with the vegetables. add some peppercorns and a some salt and set it away to simmer. After an hour and a half or so, the stock is more or less ready….
You need to drain it… get a colander or sieve and putting it over another pan (this is SO important…. don’t laugh because in a rush I once forgot and managed to lose a quarter of my stock… goodness knows what i was thinking of! I had a colander with the boiled vegetables and skin and bones and my stock, my delicous stock, was disappearing down the sink!) anyway… make sure you drain it into another pan… If you were doing this for guests and wanted the clearestr stock imaginable them drain it through muslin. I was just doing this for us so I reckoned the colander was fine.
See those vegetables? Well they have more or less donated their all to the soup.. the leek definitely has, though the carrots may still have a bit of life in them… anyway, with the rest of your leek, slice it very finely and get some pretty baby carrots.. or chop your cooked carots a bit smaller
And add them to the pot of stock.
Taste it. Does it need a pinch more salt? Some pepper?
Then add your chicken that you had pulled off the bones earlier
Let it cook for a while.. not long… those baby carrots, if you added them will need a few minutes.. and then…..
Chicken soup to soothe your cold… can you see how that could cure you?
Far better than cough and cold medicine. And you were using scraps and leftovers!
Add a couple of little breadbuns and you have a brilliant meal. I used the same recipe for the little loaves but left out the usndried tomatoes and chillies and added rose harissa to the dough… a chilli, spice and rose scented paste. Not as odd as it sounds and oh, how it livens up the dough!
You can do it… just give it a go!