Chicken Soup 2 - the Resoupening

It was time to try making chicken soup again. I like to buy the $5 rotisserie chickens on Fridays at Giant, because they make a fast and healthy meal that I don't need to put much effort into. Of course, every time I buy one, after we eat the tasty meaty bits, I'm left with a chicken carcass wasting away in its plastic box in the fridge. I feel guilty throwing it out knowing I can make something out of it, so I tried soup again this weekend. And this time I took pictures!

First I cut off the leafy end of three celery stalks and chopped them up. I also coarsely chopped half an onion and one big carrot. I tossed in two bay leaves and a huge teaspoon of thyme, and my pot looked like this:

Then I picked over the chicken, getting as much of the meat off as I could. I threw out some of the skin because it adds so much fat to the soup, but I kept a little bit for flavor. Let me tell you, ripping apart a chicken with your bare hands is slimy and sort of gross, and very difficult to do when you're being circled by three cats who think it's their dinner. Anyway, next I added 8-ish cups of water (to almost fill the pot) and my chicken bones. I added a tablespoon of powdered chicken bouillon and a tablespoon of liquid chicken bouillon (Bovril, the good stuff), and some black pepper. Things got a little ugly.


That boiled for an hour or so, and I used that time to dice two stalks of celery, two carrots, and a quarter onion so I could add them to the soup after it was done. I strained the whole mess into a huge mixing bowl, threw out the bones and stuff, and put the soup back into the pot, nearly swooning from the delicious chickeny aroma. I put it back on to boil, adding the veggies and some alphabet noodles. Here's the final result:

It ended up cloudier than last time, but I don't care. It was delicious, and I think I've got it down now and won't need to call Mom next time to remind me what I'm supposed to be doing. My man even loved it, despite the presence of "mushy vegetables", and I've gotten the green light to make it anytime.

And let's call this Thing 19, shall we? I still feel funny using dinner for Thing-a-Day but I did make it. I'll try to be a little more forgiving of myself and accept cooking as creativity.

What's for Dinner - Tomato alphabet soup

I was so incredibly exhausted last night because of a long week at work, so my dinner will have to count as my "Thing 9". I did make the soup without a real recipe, so it's sort of creative. I also made grilled ham & cheese sandwiches to go with it. I hadn't made those in years!

Here's more or less how I made it:

I diced three skinny carrots and half an onion and then cooked them in a generous dollop of olive oil until the onions were soft. Then I dumped in a box of chicken stock and a big can of tomato sauce, and some black pepper, oregano, basil, and a bay leaf. I let that boil for a few minutes to let the carrots soften up, then used my immersion blender to puree everything (take out the bay leaf first). I added a tablespoon or so of butter to make it creamier, and then I put in half a box of teeny alphabet noodles and kept it simmering until they were cooked.

It's delicious.

Chicken Soup

Chicken soup is a necessity. I can't tell you how distraught I've been, unable to make my husband chicken soup when he's sick. I mean, I heat up Progresso chicken noodle in a bowl for him and can even give him crackers with it, but it's not homemade and therefore will not miraculously bring him back to health after the first bowl.

Mom gave me her recipe - or at least the list of ingredients and vague instructions that passes for a recipe in our world - but I tried a couple of times and it wasn't very good. I used chicken legs as instructed and was grossed out by the marrow sticking out of the bones and the fat floating around in the pot, and after all that work it didn't even taste chickeny enough.

This time I had a picked-over chicken carcass left over from a previous roasted chicken dinner, and I decided to dump it into a pot and make soup out of it. Not much wasted if I failed, right? Also, I called Mom and had her walk me through some of it. Chicken carcass, a cut up onion, and 8 cups of water into a pot, and boil it for an hour or two on a medium setting. With a couple of bay leaves and some thyme.

Now - and here's the part I don't understand - I had to add a whole bunch of chicken flavored stuff (in this case, Bovril) to make it taste enough like chicken soup. And I don't understand that. Surely, these chicken concentrates, liquid or powdered, were made from chickens. I have, and am boiling, a chicken. So why is my chicken not enough to make the soup chickeny? I'm hoping someone smarter than me can figure this out and explain in the comments. People make stock and broth from chickens, don't they?

After deciding the broth was chickeny enough, I pulled out the bones and strained the soup into a big bowl to get all the floaty bits out. then it went back in the pot with some chopped carrots and celery and I let those cook while I cut up the little bits of meat left over from what I'd pulled off the chicken before boiling it. Cooked some rice separately to it wouldn't get mushy, and then mixed it all together to produce a very yummy soup.

I'll be trying this again, probably every time I have leftover chicken bones to play with. But if anyone can solve my "why am I adding chicken flavor to chicken" problem, I'd be grateful!

What's for Dinner: Baked Potato Soup

When I first came across this recipe, it called for actually baking the potatoes and scooping them out to use in the soup. While I'm sure it gives the soup an extra kick of authentic "baked potato" flavor, who has time to bake a bunch of potatoes, only to gut them and turn them into soup?


Baked Potato Soup

3lbs potatoes
1 medium onion, diced
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour
4 cups chicken broth (one of those recloseable boxes)
1 cup cream or half-and-half or whole milk
1/2 tsp thyme
3 cups shredded cheddar cheese, plus some for garnish
Note: the sharper the better, as is always the case with cheddar cheese
1 cup sour cream, plus extra for dolloping on top later
Bacon bits or bacon salt (optional)


First you boil up the potatoes so you can mash them. They cook faster if you cut them into smaller chunks. When you can stick a fork through the pieces, drain them and dump them in a big bowl and mash them roughly. You want to leave them chunky, for texture. I normally don't even use my potato masher, I just go at them with a fork. Don't add butter or cream or anything.

Next, fry up the onion with the butter in a big soup pot until the onions are soft, then whisk in the flour and let it brown a bit while you keep frantically whisking it. Then, still whisking, start adding chicken broth slowly. Start by only adding about 2 cups, then add the cream and the thyme and let it heat up until it gets frothy from the cream boiling, then turn down the heat. Stir in the mashed potatoes and blend them gently into the soup. Don't whisk them in or you'll break up all the chunks and it won't be as good. At this point, if the soup is too thick, add more broth to thin it out. I dumped the whole box in this time figuring I'd be fine, and ended up with a really thin soup, so I stopped and cooked up 3 more big potatoes to mash and add to it. Since this takes a lot longer, I recommend starting with less broth at the beginning and adding more as needed.

When it's time to serve, stir in the cheese so it melts - if you use normal cheddar you'll have an orange tint to the soup. Then you can stir in the sour cream.


When you serve this it's fun to add a blob of sour cream and a bit of cheese to the bowl, making it look all restaurant-fancy. I also cooked up bacon for bacon bits the first few times I made this, but I since discovered Bacon Salt in all its glory, and now I sprinkle that over the soup instead. I suppose you could use chives instead, if that's your thing.

What's for Dinner: Broccoli Cheddar Soup

I wanted to find a good broccoli & cheddar soup recipe because our CSA delivery included a huge bunch of floppy broccoli, and I couldn't figure out another way to eat it without the floppiness bugging me. I found some recipes online claiming to be copies of Panera Bread's famous Broccoli Cheddar soup, so I took the best one and tweaked it to my liking. The result was incredible and I have so many people asking me about it, I figured maybe I should give it to the Internet. Fly, little recipe, fly!

Awesome BroccoCheddar Soup:

1/2 large onion, diced
1/4 cup melted butter
1/4 cup flour
2 cups whole milk
2 cups chicken stock (or veg broth)
1 pound fresh broccoli, chopped to bits (use stems too)
1 cup carrots, julienned
8 ounces grated sharp cheddar
salt and pepper to taste

How-to:

Saute onion in a pat of butter. Set aside, because it's easier to make a roux without onions in the way. Melt the butter in your pot and stir in flour using a whisk. Keep whisking over medium heat for 3-5 minutes until you have a lovely paste. Stir constantly and slowly add the milk, then the chicken/veg stock, whisking like crazy. Simmer for 5 minutes.

Add the broccoli, carrots and onions. Cook over low heat until the veggies are tender, about 15 minutes if you've cut the pieces pretty small. Test tenderness with a fork. Puree using a stick blender, or use a regular blender, in batches. Return to pot over low heat and add the grated cheese; stir until well blended. Serve with crusty baguette, or don't bother making this soup at all. :p

The best thing about this recipe is that it's super flexible. Keep some extra milk/broth nearby in case you decide it's too thick when you're done. The second time I made it I had more broccoli so I used it all, and needed to add some more liquid after the veg-cooking phase. I tried using half sharp cheddar and half lowfat cheddar, and I recommend against it. the lowfat stuff doesn't melt worth a damn and you get weird stringy cheese bits. Still tasty but looks funny. I also recommend adding more carrots, but until I get a mandoline slicer I'm julienning by hand and that's bloody tedious. I suppose you could go to a salad bar and get a bunch of pre-shredded carrot to make your life easier.