Chicken Soup is food for the soul!

We’ve been a very poorly household over the past week or so and being poorly in the Peach family means it’s time for Mummy to make chicken soup.

I’m not sure what it is that I do any differently to anybody else when it comes to making chicken soup but it’s always a resounding success and Izzy has loved my chicken soup since she was tiny.  When she was small, if I was making chicken soup, she would run around to her friends house to recruit them for supper – she’d bring along their big brothers too sometimes – she felt everybody needed to know the goodness that comes from homemade chicken soup!

I seem to have hit the jackpot with great butchers close to where I live over the past few decades.  My current butcher will give me chicken carcasses, usually with wings and drumsticks attached, when I buy my meat.  They’re fabulous for stock and soup and as I’ve recently discovered, in a waste not want not kind of fashion, for the dog – more of that in a bit!

So the basis of a good chicken soup is a good chicken stock.  I do save chicken carcasses from roasts and even from those spit roasted chickens you can buy in the supermarket.  I freeze them until I have three or four for stock.

I make my stock by putting several carcasses in a large stock pot and covering them with water.  I then add a stalk or two of celery, about 10 black peppercorns, a large carrot, topped and tailed and cut in half and a peeled, whole, onion.  I don’t add any salt – it really isn’t necessary and the more you avoid using it in the basics the more you begin to appreciate the “real” taste of your food.  Bring the lot to the boil, reduce to a rolling simmer, cover and cook for at least an hour, preferably two or three.  If you need to go out half way through the process, just turn it off and then bring it back to a boil when you return and simmer for a further hour.  If anything stop starting improves the richness of the stock.

Decant the stock through a sieve into a jug and use this “First Stock” as the base for your soup.

I then fish out the onion and return the contents of the sieve to the stock pan.  Cover it all again with cold water and bring back to the boil.  Simmer on quite a high heat, just off the boil really, for a further hour or two.  Use this “Second Stock” as the basis for a dog’s dinner your four legged friend will love you for!  What I do with this is to sieve off the stock again, into a saucepan with a cup full of rice.  Bring the stock to the boil, reduce and cover and simmer for 20 minutes, when the rice should be plump and cooked.  Whilst the rice is cooking, remove any meat from the bones.  Once the rice is cooked mix in the meat and then divide the mixture into meal sized portions and freeze.  Chippy, my lovely spaniel, thinks this is the best food known to dog!

I eat anything but rice and chicken is best!

So onto making the soup!

Ingredients:

1 litre chicken stock

1 large breast of chicken, diced into centimetre cubes

2 large carrots, diced into centimetre cubes

2 baking potatoes, diced into centimetre cubes

1 large white onion, finely chopped

250g sliced mushrooms

Method:

1.  Put all the ingredients into a large saucepan and bring to the boil.  Add about a 1/2 teaspoon of ground black pepper.

2.  Reduce the heat to a simmer, cover and cook for about 20 minutes when the potatoes and carrots should be cooked through.

3.  Adjust the seasoning (i.e. the pepper – step away from the salt, I tell you!)

4.  Serve.

5.  Have seconds.

6.  And thirds, and and and until its all gone!