This recipe makes soup for an army. I mean really, you can't make soup for just one, let alone two, or even four. You make stock, and you make STOCK. I came about this recipe several years ago after realizing that I had a lot of chicken left over after making a roast and just wasn't sure what to do with it. So, this is really a "left over meal." But, you could make fresh, it's just more work the night you make it, that's all.
This recipe has gone through a few changes over the years as well. This is the best part about playing with food. It started out as just plain old chicken soup. Then I realized that I "could" add noodles and made chicken noodle soup. Few years later I was reminded of this chicken and corn chowder that I used to get growing up. My father was in the Boy Scouts of America, and they had this dinner every year and "this guy" (hey, I was like 8, how am I supposed to remember what the dinner was for and who the guy was?) and he made GREAT chicken and corn chowder WITH dumplings. Now, I have not yet added dumplings to this soup, but it's an option to consider later down the road. What I really did with this soup was make it taste like my great grandfather Pappy Bro and Grammy Ester's soup. THEY made an awesome chicken and corn chowder. Odd thing is, I can only remember having it once or twice. But I have memories of it nonetheless. And I put noodles in mine, they didn't.
So, while I call this "chicken soup" it's probably more appropriate to call it "Chicken Chowder Noodle Soup" since that's what goes in it and how it comes out. Get ready to feast and let's play.
Pre-Ingredients:
- You will need an already roasted chicken carcass. You can use a leftover that you recently made or simply go get a rotisserie from your local supermarket.
- Make sure that it's scraped clean of the meat and set the meat aside in a bowl or bag. If you don't get all of it, don't worry about it, that just adds extra flavor and the 4 hour boil you're about to put it through will help it come off the bone later.
- Chicken - you can use your leftovers, or you can bake up more parts and use those, and/or saute up a bunch of chicken breasts, add the meat from here to that bowl/bag from above.
- Of course I make my own stock! It's EASY
- You'll need: Olive oil, Carrots, Celery, Onion, Salt, Pepper, Your chicken carcass, Water
- Get a giant pot. How big? Well, how much soup do you want to make and how big is your chicken? Yep, that big.
- Give the bottom a quick splash of the olive oil, covers about 1/2
- Add your carrots, celery and onion - these have been roughly chopped, looks don't matter, we're going to toss them later
- heat them up and stir them around until they are just "squishy" and the bottom of the pan is mildly brown
- Toss a little water in and deglaze (we've covered this, it means srape the brown off the bottom)
- Add the chicken carcass
- Pour water into the pot until it's about 2 inches over the carcass
- Generously salt and pepper
- Cover, bring to a boil, turn down and simmer it for about 3 hours
- Every once in a while, open the lid and skim off the white frothy fat with a spoon
- After 3 hours, turn it off. Time to strain it. KEEP the stock, toss the rest.
- Put your stock aside in another container, we're going to reuse the pot (don't clean it) for the soup
- Carrots, chopped nicely
- Celery, chopped nicely
- Onion, chopped fine (not a fan of huge pieces in my soup, but love the flavor)
- So, this combination is known as Mirepoix - hence forth to be called "The Holy Trinity" of soups
- OK, back to our pot, olive oil again, toss in the Holy Trinity and saute until soft
- Pour in the stock over the top and bring to a high simmer, not quite full boil
- Add more vegetables!!
- You can use frozen veggies, which I usually do, or you can use fresh
- Corn, Green Beans, Peas, more Carrots
- Locate the chicken meat that you placed aside from pre-ingredients
- Shred or chop this up to bite size pieces
- Add it to the pot
- Keep the temp so that the soup is still at a good simmer
- Salt and Pepper to taste
- I tend to under salt, allowing the consumers to salt their bowl to taste
- Right now, you have CHICKEN SOUP
- Add Noodles: optional
- I like egg noodles personally
- Now, you have CHICKEN NOODLE SOUP
- Time to thicken things up a bit, get the soup to a rolling boil
- If you need this to be gluten free, use cornstarch, if you don't care, use flour
- Mix up 2oz of flour/cornstarch to 8oz of water and shake/whip until combined
- While the soup is at a rolling boil, start to slowly pour the thickener into the pot, keep stirring at all time so you don't get lumps.
- Pour about 1/2 the slurry in, let bubble and thicken. Want it thicker? Add more slurry.
- Now you have CHICKEN CHOWDER NOODLE SOUP
Whatever you don't consume that night, you can freeze. This soup freezes really well.
I'm overdue to make this. Hrm. Now I'm hungry. Anyhow, enjoy and happy souping!
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