Chicken soup

Cafe Society
1

1 yellow onion, coarsely chopped
2 pounds stir-fry chicken (bits of chicken breast)
2 leeks
3 medium potatoes
1 large can chicken stock
3 carrots, peeled and sliced into rounds
1/2 pound fresh kale
1 pint heavy cream
Butter

Melt the butter in a large pot. Add the chopped onions and cook them a little. Add the chicken and cook it. While that’s cooking cut the tops and roots off of the leeks. Cut lengthwise and slice the halves crossways about a half-inch thick. Slice the potatoes thickly and then quarter. Remove the stems from the kale and chop about an inch wide. Add the stock, potatoes, leeks, carrots and kale to the pot. Simmer until it’s done. Add the heavy cream and heat but do not boil. Add freshly ground pepper and serve.

2

Sounds quite yummy! Why no celery, ground celery seed, or even celery salt though? :confused: What about a teeny bit of garlic? Maybe some (fresh at the time of canning) tomatoes? Basically, asking if you have any slight variations that you use at times.

3

Sounds wonderful, Johnny! If you have some, a bit of “dark meat” (from the leg or thigh) will add a touch of extra flavor, as will some noodles &/or dumplings. Serve over hot biscuits, split, for a touch of heaven.

4

Actually, it’s my first attempt. I did add some minced garlic, which I cooked with the onion. I forgot about that. I’ll remember the celery for next time. I didn’t add any salt, since the broth was salty enough.

ETA: Thanks for the suggestion!

5

The correct recipe:
1 can Campbells.

What? It’s comfort food, and I want it just like when I was 5!

6

Alternatively, you might steer away from celery, and add good sweet peas instead. That would also be good, but I’d not add the garlic perhaps, depending on if you wanted to bring out the sweetness of the peas. Maybe parsely? How about onion, chicken, leeks, potatoes, chicken stock, carrots, peas, heavy cream, parsely, pepper, and a teeny bit of cumin? Or: onion, chicken, leeks, potatoes, chicken stock, carrots, peas, heavy cream, parsely, pepper, maybe a bit of crushed fried bacon (blotted) and a bit of garilc.

Another idea is to try sage in the soup, but I’d not have peas in the soup if I had sage-y chicken. Hmmm, sage, onions, lemon, pepper, a bit of garlic, chicken, carrots, leeks, celery, tomatoes, potatoes and heavy cream. That might be a good alternate variety. I’d use fresh lemon juice, or maybe lemon pepper in a pinch for the seasoning. Lemon juice concentrate if you must, but not much. Careful not to curdle the cream with the lemon, as well.

7

Nope, it’s

1 can Campbells
1 can water

:slight_smile:

8

Cream? Heavy cream? In chicken soup?!? I have never heard of such a thing! And here I thought I was channeling my Jewish husband’s dear Bubbe when I slaved hours over the usual chicken parts, veggies and seasonings (and matzo ballls at the end, ferchrissake!) to reproduce his childhood favorite.

Sounds yummy, and I will be sure to try it next time I make a pot. :slight_smile:

9

:smack:
:smiley:

10

Get your hands on a “boiler” or a soup chicken. Whole chicken.

Sauteé your onions lightly, then toss in your other aromatics - garlic, carrots, celery (seriously, hubby and I both hate celery, but just a roughly chopped stick in the soup makes so much difference to the flavour, it’s not funny). Put your chicken on top then cover with cold water. Bring up to the boil, then drop to a low simmer, clamp the lid on and leave for a few hours. Generally I leave mine for 2-3 hours. It makes your whole house smell wonderful.

Once the cooking’s over, you turn off the heat and let the soup cool to the point where you can manually handle the chicken out of the broth. It will fall apart at this point.

Strain your soup off into another saucepan, take the skin off the chicken and start flaking the meat into the broth. Gently reheat, add some salt and pepper for seasoning and add some noodles, dumplings or matzo balls for body.

If you use a stock/boiler/soup chicken, you don’t need to buy a separate can of stock. And the meat is just so juicy and tender, it doesn’t even consider going dry when you cook it this way.

11

I was going to use a whole chicken, but the only ones at the store were frozen so I just used the stir-fry bits and stock.

12

Grab a frozen one, and let it defrost in the fridge over a couple of days :slight_smile:

The frozen chickens, though, were they roasting chickens or boilers? Boilers are soup birds, they’re older and “gamier” and thus impart more flavour to the soup. Roasting chickens are younger, and the soup doesn’t always end up as chickeny, so you may have to help it along with some stock cubes/granules. But it’s still a nice way to deal with a chicken rather than just roasting/grilling it.

I’ve done the stir-fry bits in stock (with a can of sweetcorn in this case) soup before. It’s good for filler, but I still prefer a whole chicken soup. Even if it is a bit of a palaver (though it’s still less work than clam chowder).

13

The only whole chickens at the store are fryers and roasters. I’ve never seen a boiling chicken in any store.

The only bad thing about the soup is that it blew my plans of making fish tacos out of the water. I had two bowls of soup today, and I’m just not hungry.

14

Stopping in to say: excellent thread, because I loves me some made from scratch chicken soup.

15

It’s educational too. Next time I’ll add celery.