Chicken Soup 101 Back to Basics

 Chicken Soup made from scratch, cannot ever be matched by anything in a can or package.

 When your supermarket has a sale on Perdue Oven Stuffer Roasters, stock up and buy a few.  Take the chicken out of the wrapper, cut it up, removing the gizzards and liver, and remove the plastic temperature indicator, then freeze each chicken separately for future use.

When you want to make the soup, you can take the chicken out of the freezer bag, and pop it into a large cooking pot with water and begin to boil it.

Assemble sticks of Celery, a large Onion, the bag of frozen fresh Parsley, salt and pepper.

 Then  chop up the onion,

 wash and chop up several sticks of Celery,

 and add a lot of Parsley, crushing it while it is still frozen and removing any long stems.

 The Chicken must boil until the meat can be pulled with a cooking fork from the bones.  Be sure not to over cook the chicken or it will become stringy.

There is a very nice tool that is round, flat, full of holes and able to lift the chicken out of the broth easily.

 In your sink  place a colander into a second pot, and put in the chicken parts, then  pour in the broth.

 The colander is lifted out of the pot and placed aside.  Use the pot cover to catch a little broth which runs off the chicken.

 

Rinse off the first pot and remove the scum which collects at the boiling edge, and then return the clear broth to the first pot.

 Add the chopped vegetables to the broth.

 Add a small amount of frozen corn kernels for taste,

 and some salt and fresh ground pepper .

 While that is cooking,  take the chicken out of the colander to cool on the cutting board.  When it can be handled  remove the skin, bones, the grizzle, and veiny parts.  This is what takes the most time and effort.

 The chicken can be torn or cut into smaller pieces.

 The cleaned and smaller pieces of chicken are put into the cooking pot.

 When the celery and onion are tender, stop cooking and let cool.  Use a ladle to pour soup into containers for freezing.

 If you have washed off your tools and cutting board as you make Chicken Soup, there won't be much of a clean up.

 Chicken soup in the freezer, is like money in the bank.  Additional ingredients may be added as barley, rice, pasta, other vegetables and herbs, but the flavor will probably change a bit.  I like the basic plain chicken soup for a lower carb diet.  By making you own Chicken Soup you can also control the amound of salt added.

Partner Chicken Soup with a Corn Muffin.  Yummy and wonderfully soothing on a snowy  Winter day.

Recipe for Cornbread Muffins

1 1/4 cup all purpose flour

3/4 cup corn meal

1/4 cup sugar

2 tablespoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup milk

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 egg

1/2 cup frozen corn

Heat oven to 350 degrees F.  Spray muffin pans cups with cooking spray.  Combine dry ingredients.  Stir in milk, oil, and egg, mixing just until ingredients are moistened, add corn.  Spoon batter into muffin cups, filling 2/3 of the way.  Bake around 25 minutes or until golden brown and tooth pick comes out clean.  Cool on rack.