To me, cooking is from scratch. A shortcut is using canned tomatoes instead of using fresh plum tomatoes.
When I saw a recent headline for Chicken Soup recipe, I decided to see if there was anything different that I could learn. Silly me...my Chicken soup is HOMEMADE and REAL- NOT A FAKE MAKE-BELIEVE HOMEMADE KIND!
To make delicious homemade chicken soup you have to use chicken with bones. Sorry but in order to get flavor you need the bones. If you roast the chicken first all the better to enhance the flavor. I have made chicken soup from a whole roaster without roasting it first but the best homemade chicken soup is made with a pre-roasted chicken. Both dark and white meat gives it a ton of flavor.
First I start off with my whole roaster. You can use an Oven Stuffer or a smaller whole roasting chicken. Roast it first, feed the family a nice, old-fashioned chicken dinner and then put what is left in a large pot of cold water.
Bring it to a boil with a medium sized, peeled yellow onion and about 5 peeled cloves of garlic. Lower the flame to simmer and then add fresh parsley, celery, carrots and salt and pepper. Slowly simmer the soup with the lid on.
You can leave the vegetables whole or you can chop them but if you leave them whole, remove them and chop them to serve.
After about 1 1/2 hours, remove the carcus and check for loose bones. Remove any chicken from the bones and add to the soup. Return the vegetables and season for taste. You may add a bit of salt and/or pepper. Sometimes I add about 1/2 teaspoon of Hungarian paprika.
Optional things I like are: chopped tomatoes, cauliflower and even tiny tender peas. Add some homemade dumplings or small firm noodles and you have a delicious soup without using soup starter (which is coloring and artificial flavoring-YUCK!).
Today I made my chicken soup and here is a little variation to the recipe.
As I don't have many days off lately and I have lots on my to-do list, I found an even easier and quicker way to make a delicious pot of soup!
Fryer chickens were on sale and I bought a small one. I put it in a (disposable) foil pan in a 425 degree oven and while I cleaned the bathroom, my chicken roasted.
About 40 minutes later ( I also did some laundry and various other chores- it doesn't take me 40 minutes to clean a bathroom!) I took the chicken out of the oven and put it in a large pot along with the "drippings". I covered it with water and set it to simmer on the stove. It simmered for about 30 minutes while I prepared the vegetables.
I peeled a bunch of garlic and washed a handful of parsley and put both into my mini chopper.
I removed the chicken from the pot and set it in a bowl to cool.
I added the parsley/garlic mix to the pot, about 2 teaspoons of paprika and some fresh ground pepper and then finished up by washing and chopping some celery. I then took my fresh homegrown carrots and cut them up. I didn't grow enough for my soup so I added a few organic carrots to the mix.
Then I removed the chicken from the bone and put about 3 cups aside to use later. The chicken that I put in the soup was chopped up first.
I simply through all this into the pot, turned to low heat and allowed it to cook for about 20 minutes. I then added about 1 cup of uncooked Barilla mini farfalle and when the pasta was still al dente I turned the heat off.
This made about 3 quarts of soup. I didn't put all the chicken in the soup and reserved some for a quick and easy recipe that I will share later.
Depending upon the size pot you use and the size of the chicken you can make a lot of soup which freezes really well! This batch was good for two for dinner with leftovers for lunch. I also brought a quart to my dad who needed some soup on this chilly day!
Let me know what you think of my chicken soup recipe. Share your secrets for your best chicken soup recipe.
i like a little dill and i stuff my chicken
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