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.)

[alaneer.livejournal.com]

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

[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.

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.