Yes, it's another chicken soup recipe. I'm on a chicken soup kick. I'm deathly ill (ok, it's just a bad cold) and the only thing that sounds good is chicken soup. Too ill to cook, really, but if I could clone myself and make that person healthy, I'd make me my recipe for Manly Chicken Soup, a seriously intense version of chicken soup with roasted meat and vegetables.
Have a great weekend, intrepid remodelers, and stay well.
Manly Chicken Soup
Kitchen needs: Working range and oven (you could use a slow cooker after roasting the meat and veggies, but it has to be a huge one)
Serves: A houseful of sick people
This soup will kill the plague. It is a pain to make but emerges glossy and dark gold, redolent with meaty goodness. This is not your wan, pale, low-fat, girly girl chicken soup. This is manly chicken soup. Make a huge pot and give it away to sick people across the land. All measurements are approximate and the soup changes each time you make it. Feel free to use some or all of these root vegetables or use chicken thighs/wings/carcasses. I usually just buy what’s cheapest.
Meat:
One big “supersaver” pack of chicken legs and a couple of bone-in breasts.
A beef soup bone or two.
Root vegetables:
Four parsnips
Two small turnips
Four carrots and/or one large rutabaga
Two leeks
An onion, halved and stuck with two whole cloves
Herbs and spices:
A handful of parsley
Two bay leaves
Some dill
Pepper corns
First, brown the meat and vegetables in the oven. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. I use two pans: one for the chicken legs and one for the breasts/soup bone/vegetables. The oven smokes a bit, so turn on your fan.
Add the chicken legs to one roasting pan. In the second roasting pan, add the onion halves, the soup bone and the chicken breasts. Set aside half of the other root vegetables for adding later in the soup. The other half should be cut into very large chunks and added to the second roasting pan.
Add a bit of vegetable oil to both pans and toss ingredients, to minimize sticking. Roast until significant browning occurs. Watch the vegetables carefully and turn them after about 5 minutes, since they will brown much more quickly in the fat than the meat, and remove them when they are browned. The chicken legs should be turned after 10-15 minutes.
When large-chunk vegetables are brown, add them to a very large soup pot with the herbs and spices, and fill about 1/2 full with water.
Add the chicken legs and beef bone to the pot when browned and start cooking soup on a medium-low burner. It doesn’t matter if they are fully cooked, since you’ll be cooking them in the stock. You just want some nice browning action. Scrape the drippings from the pan with a wooden spoon and add them, too. Add more water, if necessary, to fill the pot about 2/3 full.
As for the breasts, roast them until done (see above image). Alternatively, throw them in the pot with the other stuff and poach them in the stock. Basically, you are using the breasts for soup meat, so you don’t want to overcook them. When completely cooked, cool breasts, then shred flesh and set aside in a covered bowl for adding to the soup when serving. Moisten with a little broth if they get dry. Throw the denuded breast bones in stock pot.
If you’d like to set aside more chicken, remove a few of the chicken legs from the broth after about 30 minutes, and add the meat to your meat bowl and throw the bones back in the stock pot.
Half-cover the pot and simmer soup for about three hours, more if you like. Do not, for the love of God, bring soup to a boil. There is NO NEED for a cloudy stock, and boiling will always make a cloudy stock. Keep heat on low the entire time and skim foam and fat that floats to the top.
About an hour before the soup is done, make noodles or matzoh balls according to your favorite recipe. I add cayenne, chopped parsley and celery leaves to my matzoh balls for a kick and color.
The rest of the vegetables should be cut into pretty bite-sized pieces and added to the soup with salt and pepper to taste about 30 minutes prior to serving. Save some celery leaves and parsley to garnish soup bowls, if you like.
Delicious roasted chicken breast image courtesy of the manly men at Meathenge.
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