This year for Thanksgiving we're sleeping in, not feasting and just snacking though the day. The menue plan so far is to start with scones for breakfast. As soon as that's done I'll throw together a big pot of chicken soup on one burner, a pot of mulled cider on another burner and put a pan of stuffing in the oven because it's Thanksgiving and you just have to have stuffing. After that I'll lay out a cheese board with summer sausage and crackers, put some cauliflower and broccoli next to them in a bowl so we can nom on those with ranch dip, make onion dip for ripply potato chips and bean dip for tortilla chips and finally have flatbread for humus too. I figure an hour's work and I'll have the day free to write, relax and watch Northern Exposure to my heart's content. No reason for anyone to go hungry, we all serve ourselves as we please and no one works too hard cooking a feast. Scones already has their own post as does stuffing, but I haven't done a post on chicken soup yet so here goes.
Ingredients:
Leftover chicken, taken from the carcass of a rotisserie chicken or the leftovers form the one you roasted last weekend while you warmed up the house cooking and baking.
Chicken stock, made from the last chicken you roasted or the last rotisserie chicken you bought.
Onions and garlic if you like, and you will like. It just isn't right without onions.
Celery
Potatoes
Carrots
Any other vegetables you have around that you want to throw in. Peas are classic. I'll be adding some broccoli and cauliflower because I have them and maybe some bok choi because it's growing pretty fast this year. I'll also add some mushrooms because I have some I didn't use last night and I need to cook them in something soon. Even asparagus. Chop the stems and save the tops for the crudite platter.
You can steam them and other things like broccoili or cauliflower in a strainer above the soup under the lid.
You can leave it at that or you can add noodles or rice to make it interesting. Up to you.
So, Chop onions of your choice (I use yellow but you can use red, white, leeks or whatever you have) and saute in the soup pot until they're clear or even slightly caramelized. Add garlic and celery when the onions are almost ready. Garlic burns easily and turns bitter, so you don't wan to over-do it.
Add chicken stock and deglaze the pan. If you want to deglaze the pan with white wine, that adds wonderful flavour, too.
Chop and add the carrots. They take the longest to cook. Cut them up as big or small as you like, but remember that smaller pieces cook faster and fit better on a spoon.
Chop some potatoes and add them. Make them as big or small as you want. Keep in mind that this is a soup and not a stew, so larger is appropriate for stews while smaller is better for soups, but it's your choice and the soup can be as hearty or as delicate as you like.
Now add any other veg or mushrooms that you have, keeping in mind the general admonitions about size already mentioned.
I usually don't add noodles or rice but if you have any leftover or feel like cooking them in the pot a little longer go ahead. Barley's good, too.
Add water as needed to keep the liquid soupy and not stewy.
Soup is a good thing to put on the stove in the morning for a lazy day of this and that at home. Just put it on simmer, check to add water once in a while and it just gets better. When it gets low and boils down to stew consistency you can make a roux to thicken the liquid into a gravy and use it to make pot pies.
Serve with crackers, hearty bread (preferably freshly home made) or biscuits. These can be laid out on the groaning board (table) to be picked up during the day as people get peckish. As a side course it's nice but it can be a whole light meal in itself on cold nights when you're feeling icky and need comfort food. I tend to crumble crackers into my chicken soup. Sopping a fat hunk of bread in the soup is luxuriously delicious, too. The beverage of your choice is, of course, up to you. Wine, beer, mulled cider, milk, water...
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