Roasted Chicken Soup
Economy is important. A roasted chicken can offer a family several meals if handled correctly. And each meal is a little different so you won’t be serving ‘chicken’ every night. Oven Roasted chicken, cooked whole and slowly is a beautiful thing; its moist and juicy and smells comforting. A whole chicken requires almost no effort. Merely coat the skin with butter or olive oil and sprinkle on any of variety of dried herbs salt and pepper and bake at 350 F degrees for ½ to two hours (depending on size) or until the juices run clear and the legs are wiggling easily. With a side of vegetables this can offer a family two meals; a main dinner and subsequent lunches. But what to do about the carcass? There is plenty of good meat left on the bird’s remains even though it is not pretty to look at and cannot be neatly sliced like breast meat or eaten off the bone like a drum stick or wing. The answer to this is simply boiling it water. The rest of the chicken’s nutrition’s will seep into the water offering up a delicious broth (chicken stock). You won’t have to pay $4 for it in a store for the basis for a soup which you can add more vegetables and rice or lentils, cannellini beans or whatever too. The key to having delicious broth is that you have used a previously roasted chicken. Somehow that lends a lot more taste to the soup.
I know people who will make their soup in the oven too, instead of on the stove top in a pot, literally roasting chicken soup. This method is fool proof. First have an oven proof cooking vessel with a lid. You are placing the entire chicken (it will work with the remains of previously cooked chicken too) in water. Fill the vessel about half way up with water. Add the bird. Add celery, carrots, and if you have fresh herbs, tie together a few stalks (a bouquet garni) of oregano, basil, parsley, thyme, marjoram, rosemary, or whatever combination thereof. Add a bay leaf or two and cook for about 3 hours. Let cool, remove the herbs. Pick the meat from the bone and add back to the broth. Reheat and season with salt and pepper. By seasoning later you are ensuring you won’t over salt the soup. This way it won’t taste like it came out of a can. Add fresh vegetables and whatever carbohydrate you feel you need to the broth and cook till they are tender.
Why else would “A chicken in every pot” be a famous Depression Era political slogan?
