This luscious bowl of chicken noodle soup was made from the remains of three rotisserie chickens, a few fresh vegetables, and some leftover noodles.
We're sure many of you have turned to one of these fully-cooked birds when faced with a busy week. They're great for a simple meal and, the second day, they can be added to a salad or sandwich for another quick supper.
But, do you save the bones, skin, and that wonderful gelatin in the bottom of the container for when you have time to create a great soup? Everyone from your Grandmother to the honorary Great Aunt of a generation for cooks, Julia Child, has told you to stow your cooking scraps in the freezer to make stocks.
In this age of wasted food, it really feels good to turn something that would have been trashed into a great meal.
The pot in the photo above contains the contents of a bag of chicken bones, skin, and gelatin that we had added to, over a month or so. Penny took it from the freezer on a rainy afternoon and turned it into a lick-smacking, rich, sticky-with-goodness chicken stock.
When she prepped the flavorings of carrot, onion, and celery to make the stock, she chopped up enough to create a soup when the stock was finished.
After lifting out as many bones and bits as she could with a spider (like the one above), she strained the broth into a bowl through a fine sieve. After it sat and settled, she removed most of the fat with paper towels.
A quick wipe of the pan assured there were no bone bits remaining. That let her make the soup in the same pan – one of her favorites. She lightly sautéed the waiting veg in a bit of olive oil before returning enough stock to the pan to make a few servings of soup. Once the vegetables were cooked, she added some pieces of white meat from the last of the chickens that became the stock.
If you've never tried this method of making chicken stock, you are missing out on some big flavor. Remember to go easy on the salt because those chickens have already been seasoned and may have been brined.
Penny never added any salt to ours, but she did add a dribble of soy sauce for depth of flavor. This batch also had pieces of ginger, star anise, clove, and a touch of sherry vinegar right at the end.
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Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photos: ©2017 Penny & Ed Cherubino
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