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chicken soup
Jan. 21st, 2006 03:49 pmLast night Joel and I made a Provençal chicken and steamed some broccoli for supper, so today I made...you guessed it - soup! For the stock I saved the water from the broccoli and then last night added all the drippings/liquid from the roaster and put it all in the fridge so that today I could scrape the fat off the top. This was by far the fattiest chicken I've ever seen, but whole roasters at the market are 2.75 euros/kg, and you can't beat prices like that! It was over 3 kg (6.6 lb), and ones that big don't fit totally into our roaster, so we cut off the wings and drumsticks and froze them for later use.
I combined the broccoli juice/chicken goodness mixture with 6 cups water and the stalk from the broccoli (I generally only steam the florets, it's easier than trimming the hard rind off the stalk), and then sliced and added 5 stalks celery, 3 1/2 carrots, and a big onion. Then Joel helped me cut all the meat off the carcass; we'd eaten one of the breasts, and saved the other breast for lunch meat, but there was still plenty of meat to throw into the soup. I also dug out the herbs from the cavity of the chicken and tossed them into the soup. Beyond that, seasoningswise, I just added a dash of pepper, two bay leaves, some celery seed (it just isn't chicken soup without celery seed), and a dash of salt; normally I don't need to add any salt but that's because I've added some buillon cubes, and when you're used to buillon-based soups, you get used to the extra salt. Mmm, chicken soup. Tasty, and feels so good on a sore throat.
You know, reading my posts on food, you'd get the impression that all we eat is soup. That's partially true. We make a lot of soup in winter because it freezes well and it's easy to reheat for a quick hot meal. We generally have soup for lunch, with some rolls or toast. But we do make alot of food other than soup, it's just that they're always going to be from recipes we know and love, and not things that I'm making up as I go along. The process of creating rather than just following instructions is far more interesting to write about. I also take a great deal of pride in making soup out of whatever odds and ends we have on hand. We don't have the biggest budget to work with while here in Amsterdam, and I feel very self-satisfied when I can take just whatever is on hand and turn it into 2-4 more meals. I also take great pride in the fact that making soup keeps me from throwing away alot of perfectly good food (if you aren't making soup of it, cleaning all the tiny last little titchy bits of meat off a carcass doesn't seem that worthwhile) AND it's incredible how easy it is to add extra healthy things. Most people would just throw away the liquid they steamed their broccoli in - but I see that lovely green hue and think "Vitamins! Vitamins!". Most people would just toss out the stalk of broccoli if they weren't going to cut it up and steam it. But I'll toss it into the soup, let all the nutrients and flavor cook out of it, and then throw it away. So when I make soup, I can thumb my nose at the world and say "Hah! I can get more meals and more nutrients for my money while throwing away less than you do!" And this makes me happy, and that's one reason why I like soup.
I combined the broccoli juice/chicken goodness mixture with 6 cups water and the stalk from the broccoli (I generally only steam the florets, it's easier than trimming the hard rind off the stalk), and then sliced and added 5 stalks celery, 3 1/2 carrots, and a big onion. Then Joel helped me cut all the meat off the carcass; we'd eaten one of the breasts, and saved the other breast for lunch meat, but there was still plenty of meat to throw into the soup. I also dug out the herbs from the cavity of the chicken and tossed them into the soup. Beyond that, seasoningswise, I just added a dash of pepper, two bay leaves, some celery seed (it just isn't chicken soup without celery seed), and a dash of salt; normally I don't need to add any salt but that's because I've added some buillon cubes, and when you're used to buillon-based soups, you get used to the extra salt. Mmm, chicken soup. Tasty, and feels so good on a sore throat.
You know, reading my posts on food, you'd get the impression that all we eat is soup. That's partially true. We make a lot of soup in winter because it freezes well and it's easy to reheat for a quick hot meal. We generally have soup for lunch, with some rolls or toast. But we do make alot of food other than soup, it's just that they're always going to be from recipes we know and love, and not things that I'm making up as I go along. The process of creating rather than just following instructions is far more interesting to write about. I also take a great deal of pride in making soup out of whatever odds and ends we have on hand. We don't have the biggest budget to work with while here in Amsterdam, and I feel very self-satisfied when I can take just whatever is on hand and turn it into 2-4 more meals. I also take great pride in the fact that making soup keeps me from throwing away alot of perfectly good food (if you aren't making soup of it, cleaning all the tiny last little titchy bits of meat off a carcass doesn't seem that worthwhile) AND it's incredible how easy it is to add extra healthy things. Most people would just throw away the liquid they steamed their broccoli in - but I see that lovely green hue and think "Vitamins! Vitamins!". Most people would just toss out the stalk of broccoli if they weren't going to cut it up and steam it. But I'll toss it into the soup, let all the nutrients and flavor cook out of it, and then throw it away. So when I make soup, I can thumb my nose at the world and say "Hah! I can get more meals and more nutrients for my money while throwing away less than you do!" And this makes me happy, and that's one reason why I like soup.
