Getting into Autumn Eating - Chicken Stock and Chicken and Vegetable Soup

For the past couple of days I have been wanting to make stock in order to make soup.  Now for me soup is a meal in itself especially when it is homemade and I am quite happy with a bowl of soup on any occasion.  G is a different kettle of fish though.  Like meat pies, he has not been bought up to eat soup.  I nearly therefore fell of my perch this morning when he requested that I make some chicken soup as we had the remains of the chicken from the other night in the fridge and it would have been a pity not to use it up.  He has somewhere down the line been listening to what I have advocated for years.  I am really shocked.  I therefore as requested set too and made some stock first, then going on to make the soup later on.  It worked out well as I had the chicken and various vegetables both fresh and in the freezer that needed using up.  I was going to turn the chicken into a stir fry!  In any event there was enough chicken for the soup and also for a stir fry type meal for tomorrow!

The Stock

I have a chicken carcass left over from our Sunday evening meal.  There was a load of golden jelly in the pot from the Roast and so I have kept that to one side.  

I am not going to waste this carcass plus all the residual meat which was left over and being in economical mode, I am attempting not to waste anything.  The reality is that would be sacrilege especially when there is so much goodness in this one carcass to use within other meals or to make a stock for the Pantry shelf with.

I therefore started by relocating the carcass to a board and proceeded to cut and pull the meat off in whatever way I could and set the meat to one side.  That is going to  be needed later for what I want to cook.  

I then grabbed one of my stock-pots from the reorganised kitchen cupboard and decanted the carcass plus any skin and bones and any tiny bits of meat into the pot.  To this I have added a large onion together with skin.  Keeping the skin on gives more colour to the stock. I have chopped this in half and added a single clove into each half.  I have then added in a couple of sticks of carrot, half a leek, a small amount of celery (I always err on the side of celery as it can be extremely over-powering).  It gives a lot of flavour but it can be very strong; so gently does it.  I then add in a couple of black peppercorns, a light sprinkling of white pepper, some Rosemary, Thyme and a couple of dried Bay leaves.  Water is then added to just cover the carcass.  Bring to the boil and then down to a simmer for 3 hours or longer.  You can leave this overnight.

In the interim I have prepped up the fresh veg that I am going to use in the soup and put that to one side.  I will chop it into the sizes I want when making the soup.

I then chopped up the chicken meat left over into reasonable sized pieces.  This particular chicken was quite substantial nice and thick across the breast and there was a lot more meat than I had anticipated.  I will use a quantity of it in the soup - maybe all of it, or in the alternative it could be used in a Chicken stew.  Mum always used to make a particularly delicious stew out of leftovers and odds and ends, which stretched the pennies that bit further.

You can also add in a small quantity of Pearl Barley or pasta, or rice to the soup as well.

I do add in a little frozen vegetables such as a few peas at the end, and also a few green beans if I have them.

Making the Soup

I started by adding 2 pints of stock to my saucepan, I then added in my veggies.  Today's veggies were carrots, leek, celery, red onion, white onion, potato. I used small chopped cubes of the veggies.  Adding a potato is a natural way of thickening the soup.  You have to go steady with it though.      

I then added in mixed dried herbs, some fresh Rosemary - unfortunately I did not have Thyme, some white pepper, bouillon powder and cooked this altogether until the veggies were cooked.  The chicken was then added.  I then tasted the soup, and seasoned which is something I do throughout the cooking time.  This time I needed a little salt, but I also added in a little more white pepper as well.  I then added in the jellied stock from Sunday night's tea and mixed that all in.  About half an hour before the end of cooking time I also added in a few frozen peas and I also had a small quantity of runner beans in the freezer. Not enough for a meal and I therefore popped those into the pot as well to make sure they got used up.

The soup thickened up reasonably well without having to add in any commercial thickeners which are often over-salty.  This was tea and it went down very nicely indeed.

I did not make a big pan of soup, as I was restricted on what pan size I had available to me today.  Really I need to get some large saucepans in-between the largest pan of a saucepan set and a stock pot if I can locate them.  Even with that being the case we had a big soup bowl full of soup each today and there is another generous sized bowl available to have tomorrow.  The soup turned out really well and was quite substantial and tasty.  There is a generous bowl full for us each to have tomorrow as well.

It has been good to get back into the kitchen.

Catch you soon.

Pattypan

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