Approx cost: €1.00
Approx calories (per average bowl): ~200
Approx preparation and baking time: 90 minutes
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #0B0B61;”] F ollowing on from my recipe for Herb Roasted Chicken a few days ago I’ve since used the leg and remaining breast meat for some lovely fried chicken and all that remains now is the carcass with the last few remnants of meat. I haven’t counted the chicken in the cost of the ingredients since it’s purely leftovers from a previous meal. I much prefer chicken soup made with leftover chicken carcasses as opposed to soup made purely from chicken meat, it always has a much more gamey flavour. This soup is quite mild by default – you can spice it up with a bit of ginger or cayenne pepper, or add in sweetcorn or carrot if you so desire.
Ingredients
- 1 Chicken carcass, ideally still with a little meat still left on
- 1 Onion
- 1 Leek
- 2-3 medium Potatoes
- 3 tbsps Olive Oil
- 1 decilitre Milk (optional)
- 1 Chicken Stock Cube
- Salt
- Pepper
You’ll also need
- A Hand Blender
Instructions
- Start off by peeling and chopping the onion roughly and trimming the ends from the leek and slicing it lengthways half-way through to the core and rinsing under water to clean away any dirt, before chopping into thick slices. Heat the olive oil in a stock-pot or large pan and add in the onion and leek and fry gently for a couple of minutes until the onion is becoming golden, ensuring it doesn’t burn.
- While the onion and leek is frying, peel the potatoes and chop into large chunks. Add the potatoes into the pan with the onion and leek. Crumble in the stock cube, put the chicken carcass in the pan and pour in enough water to almost cover the chicken – around 0.75 – 1 litres. Add in some freshly ground salt and pepper and bring the liquid to the boil.
- Put a lid on the pan and lower the heat and simmer for around an hour, by which time any excess meat should fall right off the bones. Strain off the liquid and transfer back into the pan. Take the potato/onion/leek and chicken solids and sort through it, removing any meat from the bones and gristle and adding into the liquid, and transferring in any pieces of leek, onion or potato.
- Add in the milk if you choose to, just to lighten the colour and make the flavour a bit more creamy. Using the Hand Blender, blend the soup until smooth.
- Serve out into bowls. Top with some toasted bread or croutons, some chopped parsley and some drizzled Olive Oil and enjoy!
kate says
I hate skim fat off stock. So I put about five bottles of water in the freezer, when the stock is done I let it cool for about 10 min and them place the bottles, which now contain ice, in the stock and drag them around and the fat sticks to the bottles. Viola, it works like magic!
Charles says
Nice tip – thanks a lot! 🙂