Souper Chicken

I made chicken soup for my ill Girl Friend the other day. I don't quite know what the big deal is about chicken soup. It's not like it's hard to make. And it's only slightly less not hard to make a tasty chicken soup. I like to start with a chicken.

All kidding aside, I like a roast chicken and I like to use the leftover carcass to make either stock or soup. In fact, when it comes to stock, it's way easier to make it from the leftover roast (or baked) chicken than it is to start with raw ingredients. The roast chicken recipe is for another post, I'll assume you already made one. I often save the carcass in the freezer until I have two or three of them then I can make a big batch. It's real easy. Just put the bones in some water on the stove. how much water? Well, that's up to you. I use about a quart per bird. More if there's more meat on the bone. Bring it to a boil, then let it simmer for an hour or two. Then skim the fat off the top, strain the bones and meat out and you're done.

Hmmm, where to store it? Here's the easy trick. I'm sure you've been saving those plastic containers that the sour cream and margarine and yogurt come in. Fill up several of these with a measured amount (I use exactly one cup per container) and then freeze them overnight. The next day, pop the frozen pucks of stock out of the containers and wrap them individually while they're still frozen and put them in a bag back into the freezer. Now you have cup-sized pucks of frozen stock that you can thaw and use as you need, without taking up scads of space in the freezer. It works great.

Ok, say you're sweetheart's feeling under the weather when you get home from work. If you have a chicken carcass in the freezer, you're in luck. Throw it in a pot with a couple'a quarts of water, some salt, ground pepper, coarsely chopped carrots and a few cloves of garlic. While that comes to a boil, chop some onion, celery, and peppers (last night, I used jalapenos that I had cut the seeds and placentas out of(yeah, that's what that whitish/yellow structure inside the jalapeno is called, and it's the hottest part. Remove it and you get the flavor without a lot of heat) ). Saute that in a tiny bit of butter until the onion and celery start to soften. Dump that into the now boiling water and turn it down to a simmer. Add some dried parsley, dried rosemary, thyme, and a bay leaf.

Let that cook for about an hour then lift out the chicken carcass and let it drain and cool a bit in a colander over a bowl. Once it's cool enough to handle, remove all of the meat from the bones and chop it up and return it to the soup. Let it cook like that for another half hour or so. I like to cook rice separately and serve the soup with rice mixed in. Make this for your sick friends and it's like you're a hero. Just remember to pretend it was a lot of work.