Homemade Chicken Soup

The ultimate hug is chicken soup, I’m sure there is a Danish or urban dictionary word for when your body feels the healing power of a certain food? It’s nourishing, restorative and therapeutic all in one. We eat chicken soup on nearly a weekly basis, there’s always some in the fridge for those days when you want an easy dinner, or a quick healthy lunch and when the family is tired and emotional there is nothing better than sitting down to a steaming bowl of this soup. It makes me feel good just thinking about it!

This is the ultimate no fuss, one pot recipe and most importantly I always make chicken soup after I’ve made roast chicken. I hate wasting anything, and there’s so much goodness in roasted bones and leftover roast veggies.

The roasting gives an extra depth of flavour before everything is tumbled into a large pot, covered with water and left to bubble away. The best thing about soup recipes is they are always forgiving, I never forget to add bay leaves, broccoli, pumpkin or salt, but the addition of any vegetable works. I’ve made this several times with fresh turmeric, droopy veg from the fridge crisper, a bunch of kale for extra vitamins and goodness. You can throw in any herbs you have and after at least 3-4 hours I pick out the bones, put the shredded chicken back in the pot, give it all a little mash, check for seasoning and add a good splash of soy sauce. Sometimes to thicken I also add half a cup of lentils or dhal for the final 30 minutes.

Serve with crusty bread & parmesan.

Homemade Chicken Soup

• Author: Sue
• Prep Time: 5 minutes
• Cook Time: 3 hours (up to 4 hours)
• Total Time: 3 hours 5 minutes
• Yield: 8-10 servings 1x

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Ingredients

• Carcass from a roasted chook (meat removed and set aside)
• Leftover gravy from roast chook dinner (I always make extra knowing I’ll be using it in soup)
• Leftover roast veggies (as above) I like to bake a few extra cups of pumpkin, carrot, sweet potato, head of garlic, leek. If none are leftover just substitute for fresh veggies
• Head of broccoli (and stem included) chopped up
• 3 litres of water (enough to cover everything in the pot and then some)
• 3–4 bay leaves
• 1/3 cup tamari
• few good pinches of salt & pepper

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Instructions

1. Firstly for extra planning – roast additional veg with the intention of putting them in the soup
2. Remove leftover meat from chicken carcass
3. In a large stockpot place carcass, leftover veggies, fresh veggies if required and water
4. Season with salt, pepper, bay leaves and tamari
5. Bring to the boil and reduce to a simmer for 3-4 hours
6. Remove carcass and bones from soup, using a potato masher or hand blender gently mash “some” of the veggies so soup is nice and thick
7. Add in 1/2 cup of dried lentils or pulses if you like and simmer for a further 30 minutes
8. Shred meat of chicken and stir back into pot. Check for seasoning. I often add a little more tamari at this point.
9. If you have leftover fresh herbs like basil or parsely, perhaps a bunch of chopped kale then stir these through to soften in the last ten minutes.
10. Serve with freshly grated parmesan and crusty bread

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Notes

• The intention with this soup is to create a second meal from a roast chicken dinner. However by all means you can go ahead and use all ingredients from scratch
• The recipe is very accommodating, I switch it up depending on what is in my fridge that needs using up
• We’ve had several variations of this – if you add in some corn kernels it has an asian twist; or curry and tumeric powder gives a hint of indian.