Chicken soup - how do I make it (merged threads)

calicocat

I love chicken soup,so that has my vote.

Or you could roast the pieces,take off the meat and make a chicken and veg pie.

Gleek

Awesome! Thank you

I don't have a low cooker but it's def going to be one of my next purchases. I only got my hallogen in January - god knows how I coped without it!

I love chicken pie and that's def one of the dishes I'm going to do tomorrow There's 2kg of them though so that's why I asked about soup - thanks

gibson123

My favourite chicken thigh recipe is chicken paprika. I fry off some diced onion and some peppers in a casserole and then add a good spoonful of paprika, some grated carrots and a tin or tomatoes, some water and salt and pepper. I then pop it into an oven and cook slowly until the chicken falls of the bone. I serve it with boiled rice or cous cous.

Drumsticks I make up a sticky marinade of soy sauce, honey, garlic and lemon juice, remove the skin and marinade the drumsticks, then cook in a medium oven for 45 minutes.

Seanymph

Hopefully I'm in the right place...

I have two chicken carcasses left from roast Sunday- how do I make chicken soup with them? Or should I do something else?

ragz_2

CHuck in a big pan, cover with water (add onion peel/random veg if you want, onion peel gives it a nice colour), bring to boil, simmer with lid on for a few hours. Drain, pick off the meat. Fry celery and some chopped veg, add stock, herbs, salt, simmer until veg are soft, return meat to pan, warm through. You can blend it slightly to make it thicker or add mashed potato.

Good veg to add - leeks, carrots, cabbage, potato lentils.

mazza111

Or make a tasty chicken noodle soup with it. Spring onions, noodles and a few spices.

jeanniebeanie_2

Given that the carcasses are from cooked chickens, do any of you freeze your leftover chicken soup or re-heat leftover soup therefore having re-heated cooked chicken twice?

PipneyJane

My method is far from scientific: Put the carcasses into your largest pot, cover with water. Add the gibblets, if you saved them, and the neck. Add any trimmings from chickens past (I keep a plastic bag in the freezer in order to store any boney off-cuts from chicken breasts, etc). Add a chopped onion and garlic, a couple of peppercorns, carrot if you have one and a sprinkling of taragon. Bring to the boil and simmer for 2-ish hours or until the carcasses are so soft they break up with a wooden spoon.

Drain using a colander over your largest mixing bowl. You can chill the stock at this point, if it's late in the evening, or continue cooking. (If you chill it, it won't be that thick and won't set like a jelly.) Return the chicken stock to the pan, bring back to the boil and simmer until half the liquid has evaporated. Decant into a bowl and chill until it is set firm. Scrape off the fat from the top. (I freeze this and render it when I have enough stored to bother.) It's now ready to use or to melt gently and decant into freezer containers.

Incidentally. my dad taught me there are two types of chicken soup: "long soup", which is cooked with vegetables, and "short soup", where you're so broke you've only got the chicken carcase and maybe an onion to cook with it.

jeanniebeanie wrote: »

Given that the carcasses are from cooked chickens, do any of you freeze your leftover chicken soup or re-heat leftover soup therefore having re-heated cooked chicken twice?

Yes, of course. I freeze it and I reheat it, probably several times seeing as the dishes it's going into will probably also end up in the freezer.

The next paragraph isn't directed specifically at Jennybean, but to the wider readership. Why is there this worry about reheating cooked food? Or freezing food that has been previously cooked and then frozen? Freezing and recooking may change the texture but that's it. They don't make food more likely to give you food poisoning. The risk of food poisoning is entirely down to food hygiene: careful handling and storing of raw food, the method you use to defrost the food (slowly in the fridge for preference), how quickly it is returned to the fridge/freezer after cooking, and avoidance of cross contamination.

trailingspouse

My method is simple in the extreme, but works. Pick over the carcass removing any remaining meat (it's amazing how much is still there when you start to look). Then put the bones into a large pan and cover with cold water. Bring to the boil, and then simmer (I keep the lid on and turn the heat down to the minimum) for about an hour. Drain into a large bowl, or straight into another pan if you're going to use it straight away.
You can then put pretty much anything into it - potato, carrots and onion makes the cheapest tastiest soup imaginable. And you can make at least a sandwich with the meat you've taken off the bone - or add it in to the soup. The stock from one chicken makes at least enough soup for a ravenous family of four. And if you're really strapped for cash you can boil the bones up again the next day, and do it all over again.

bargainbetty

I would suggest softening the veggies by gently frying them in a smidgen of butter, not colouring them, just releasing the natural sugars etc.

Then add them to the stock and chicken scraps as above.