The first chicken soup of the season

[ellen_datlow]

Today I'm making my first chicken soup of this winter. What I do is buy a roast chicken at the supermarket and eat the wings and some white meat while it's fresh.

Then the next day or so I throw the rest of the chicken whole (skin, fat, bones) into a large pot, put in salt, water, parsnips, and potatoes and put it on a very low heat, checking it regularly. Sometimes I'll throw in a few bay leaves, but it really doesn't need it. Later, I'll thrown in some carrots (they cook the quickest). When it's been over the flame for a few hours (replenishing any water that boils off) it sits and cools down until I can hand the chicken and take it all the way off the bones (I'll eat the marrow of the larger bones as I work)--throw out the skin and any fat or cartilage I found and pack it up into plastic containers to freeze. It will usually last for a few meals.

And I can work while the pot cooks.

Comments

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

If the Czarina wasn't hopelessly allergic to chicken, I'd make this for her right now. (We discovered this last week that she has the same allergy to chicken that she has to lobster, and she's suffering now because she didn't want me to suffer. She knows I love the smell of lobster the way she loves the smell of chicken, so when having dinner with her mother the other night, she had a lobster ravioli solely because I wasn't there and wouldn't be tempted. Unfortunately for her, the ravioli had a huge dollop of chicken mixed with the lobster for body, as well as an apparently wonderful chicken sauce surrounding it, and she only discovered this fact after practically beating it out of the restaurant staff two days later. I suspect that part of the reason why we're seeing so many lawsuits involving food allergies is because restaurant staffs would rather lie for hours or days than check on a dish's ingredients; in any case, she's fine, and I'm going to go to extra efforts to make sure that our mutual allergies don't affect the other.)

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

How awful! I'm lucky that I don't seem to be allergic to any foods. Although I once had an allergic reaction to the combination of too much champagne and shrimp (the anti-histamine fixed it). It only happened that once.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Oh, you're lucky. (By the way, if you want to be a bit more adventurous, try your recipe with turkey. This is my and the Czarina's workaround, and nothing says "it's time for the holidays" like the smell of hot turkey soup the moment you walk into the house.)

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

I had turkey soup once and it was great. But I don't cook turkey, so no leftovers for a soup...the one time I cooked the turkey for Thanksgiving when I had a big apt and lots of friends over for dinner, I almost dropped the turkey into the litter box, which was right by the oven :-) Whew, that was close.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

In that case, if you're ever in the Dallas area, you'll have to let me fix the turkey. My tandoori turkey recipe is so popular that the Czarina's family expects it for every major holiday but Halloween, and friends try to find excuses for parties just so I'll do another one. Between the tandoori paste and a very slow roast in my smoker, the turkey ends up so moist and so tender that tasters can squeeze a piece of cold white meat in their fists and watch the juice run down their arms. That's my calling: I wasn't meant to be a writer. I was meant to be a turkey roaster!

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Yum! I'm sooo there.
I have had deep fried turkey (I think this has been discussed somewhere on an earlier post) at Kelly Link and Gavin Grant's wedding down in Asheville, NC several years ago. It was incredible. I love turkey in all its forms, so would be happy to taste your tandoori turkey (I love good tandoori chicken, but it's really hard to find in NYC--I mean GOOD tandoori chicken--it's usually too dry or too wet).

[alaneer.livejournal.com]

Sounds yummy. I use raw chicken, and also add celery and a couple of leaves of savoy cabbage.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Whatever is used on the roasted chicken skin seeps into the soup, which is what gives it the flavor I love. I know some people also add onions but I don't.

Hmmm. I'm not familiar with savoy cabbage (just googled to see what it looks like) but I'll bet that and celery would give it a whole different flavor.

[alaneer.livejournal.com]

Savoy cabbage looks like regular cabbage except the leaves a crinkled, sort of like wrinkled silk? The taste is certainly different. I also add--sometimes--pork into the pot, usually ribs. We eat the meat and the soup for a couple of days, so it's very useful to avoid cooking every day.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Since I rarely cook, making a soup (that can if I allow it become a stew) is very useful.

Are the ribs raw when you put them in? That sounds like an interesting mix of flavors--with the chicken and cabbage.

[alaneer.livejournal.com]

Everything is raw when I start. It takes about 2 hours to cook. Then we put very thin pasta into the soup, and eat the meat and veggy for a second course.

I used to cook 4-5 times a week, but I'd cut it down drastically in the past year.

[melissajm.livejournal.com]

Isn't that the pale cabbage with the long head and faintly spicy taste?

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Here's what it looks like: http://tinyurl.com/29rvdb

[melissajm.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I think I was thinking of bok choy or Nappa cabbage.

[alaneer.livejournal.com]

That's the one. :-)

[alaneer.livejournal.com]

Sort of, some are maybe oval, but the leaf colors vary from dark green to light. The only distinguishing thing is the wrinkled looking leaves. It does have a strong flavor.

[shadowsandice.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, that sounds fabulous! Melbourne's being quite wintery right now, some hot chicken soup would go down a real treat. You have fun with that.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Wait, isn't it hot there now?

[shadowsandice.livejournal.com]

Nope. Last Christmas, it actually snowed here.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

But it's not supposed to right? Remember, I taught Clarion south in February when it was brutally hot and humid in Brisbane. And I did visit Melbourne after and it was hot then.

[shadowsandice.livejournal.com]

Oh, not at all. We're supposed to be well into summer now. Melbourne is never as hot or humid as Brisbane, but we shouldn't be sitting around with jumpers and scarves and the heater on, either.

mmmm, parsnips...

[themadblonde]

I haven't had parsnips in ages. Never tried to cook them myself (I'm not much of a cook), but I do enjoy them when cooked by others.

Re: mmmm, parsnips...

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

For some reason I always get the name mixed up with turnips. Must be the nips.

they are...

[themadblonde]

closely related, actually.