I remember, back in the beginning of time, watching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos.
In one episode he stated that: If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe.
This is a bit more mundane but: If you wish to make this chicken soup you must first roast a chicken.
Actually, that’s the best part…
First one has a lovely dinner of roast chicken with all the trimmings; then one has enough soup to last for several meals.
I love soup. It’s the only thing that makes winter tolerable.
If you are feeding more than 2 people with the roast chicken you may want to use an additional chicken breast or two to add meat to the soup. As we are only 2 there was plenty of chicken leftover.
I buy jars of ‘chicken base’ or little pots of jelled concentrate to use when making soups instead of adding salt. Just be cautious as some (but not all) brands can be quite salty.
Adding tapioca is a trick I learned here. The French add it to soups to thicken them slightly without adding the taste or texture of flour or cornstarch. It just adds a nice ‘mouth feel’ to the broth.
And, as this is soup…. add as much or as little of anything as you like. In my opinion a soup recipe is more a suggested guideline than an instruction sheet.
Chicken, Wild Rice Soup
Total time: 4 hours
Ingredients:
- The stock:
- the carcass of a previously roasted chicken, including all bones, skin, but meat removed and refrigerated
- the tops from a bunch of celery or 2 ribs celery, cut into chunks
- 1 carrot, peeled, cut into chunks
- 1 onion, peeled, cut into chunks
- bouquet garni
- 2 bay leaves
- 6 cups water or enough to cover
- salt or chicken base/stock cubes, or use some chicken stock instead of water
- The soup:
- 5 medium carrots, peeled, sliced
- 4 ribs celery, sliced
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 1 cup wild rice, rinsed
- 4 cups chicken, cut into small pieces, or whatever is left from the bird
- 1/4 cup (2oz, 60ml) sherry
- 5 tbs tapioca
- 1 tbs dry mustard
- 1 tbs dried parsley
- 2 tsp dried savory
- 2 tsp dried basil
- 1/2 cup crème fraiche, or Greek yogurt
- 6 – 8 cups of the chicken stock
Instructions:
- The stock:
- Put chicken, vegetables, herbs and water in soup pot or Dutch oven.
- Cover, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer over low heat for 3 hours.
- When done, strain stock, discarding vegetables and carcass. At this point you could chill the stock and remove fat. I didn’t bother as I had trimmed it well before cooking.
- The soup:
- Bring stock to a boil over medium heat.
- Add all of the vegetables as you prepare them.
- Bring the soup to a boil.
- Add wild rice, herbs, mustard, tapioca, sherry, cover, reduce heat and simmer 45 minutes.
- Taste the vegetables and rice – if they’re done, add the chicken, simmer 10 minutes longer.
- Stir in the crème fraiche and serve.
One last thing…..
Whenever I’ve made wild rice soup the rice always expands as the soup sits. I made the soup earlier in the day and put it out in the barn to cool for a few hours. By dinnertime the flavors had blended and the rice had ‘popped’
I just heated up enough for us to eat and the rest was cool enough to go in the fridge.
We had enough for lunches for most of the week.
On a different subject…. What happened to Facebook?
Yes, yes, I know… I live in France, not a cave.
I realize that Facebook has changed its algorithm yet again. But I thought it was supposed to make it nicer – you know, all warm and cuddly and friendly and stuff.
I’m getting the type of posts that I thought I had banned years ago.
All of a sudden I’m getting crude, racist jokes; crude, misogynistic memes; and videos of fun folks torturing puppies and kittens.
I was quite happy with most of what came across my feed for the last few months. Now I’m back to looking at it with one eye closed and my finger poised on the ‘Hide Post’ button.
I don’t want to give the bad stuff even the benefit of looking at it.
It really makes me want to give up on it all together.
I suppose if I keep on banning all the nasty stuff eventually I’ll only get stuff I want to see.
Or I’ll get nothing at all.
Either will be a improvement.
For the record I’m happy to see well thought out and intelligently written opinions that are different than mine. Sadly, that is a rarity.
The soup sounds good – thanks for the recipe. There’s an article in the Washington Post today about changes FB is making to the news feeds. That might be why you’re seeing such odd posts.
Hi Judi, I know about that and read the article – but why FB assumes I’ve done a 180 politically is what is really puzzling me… And I blocked tortured animal posts a long time ago. Sigh….. I think FB may have a bigger problem than they realize.
Your FB sounds horrendous but your soup sounds divine xx
At least I’m still seeing yours 😉
I stopped using FB when we went to Australia and I didn’t miss it one bit.
Do you live in a Pineau de Charentes producing area? If so, try that instead of sherry. I’ve taken to substituting PdC almost always when sherry is called for.
Yesterday I made a garbure using a left over grilled chicken leg and the ten tonne of winter vegetables that our housesitter very kindly left us (she works at an organic market garden). The garbure — cabbage and turnip and all — wasn’t bad. Just as well, as there’s lots of it.
Susan, we used to live in the Vendee so I am familiar with Pineau – never cooked with it though. That may change…. Your garbure sounds delicious. I am just about ready to start buying vegetables again – my freezer and cave are almost empty!
I blow hot and cold with FB. I like it for contact with distant friends, but the algorithm tends to give me many of the same opinions I have already seen or expressed, only more intense. It’s divisive. And sometimes nasty.
Zoomie, I have been spending much less time there lately, which, actually, is a good thing lol
http://www.fbpurity.com/
Best thing since sliced bread if you spend any time on Facebook. You can customize almost every aspect, it’s very easy to use and I only see what I want to see now. I really don’t like Facebook anyway but at least this way, I can spend a bit of time on it checking the few friends I have without having to see all the crap that’s out there.
I just made a big pot of chicken soup this week because I’ve had the flu over a week now. I buy Das Dutchman Essenhaus chicken soup base. Or Zenders. They don’t seem to be as salty as the big name commercial ones. And I don’t add any salt until it’s done and I’ve tasted it. I know you can’t get either there, but they are available here so thought I’d mention them.
Nightsmusic, thanks for the link – just getting rid of the ads would be nice… I rarely click on anything so I’m not sure where all the crap is coming from. I’ve seen reports that the flu is nasty and widespread this year. I’m hoping we’re spared. Feel better!.
I love soup as well. It really is the best. Whenever we make stock, if we think we aren’t going to turn it into soup right away, we reduce the stock and freeze it. That way, we can slice off little bits of intense stock to put into other dishes – this way, we avoid having to buy jars of jelled concentrate.
I wondered what was going on with FB! For the first time, I got a notice that one of my comments had been marked as spam (!!) I can’t even go and look at the comment to see what on earth I said. I think perhaps the comment has been removed. (It was to a big company FB food pages something about the best way to make scones and my comment was that they might consider trying a different shaping method that would give them even more loft. I don’t recall now if I included a link. Perhaps I did and so whichever admin was skimming the comments didn’t care for my multi-sentence comment that didn’t completely agree with their view and didn’t contain something inane like “yum” or “oh boy, that looks real good”.
Elizabeth, I have given up commenting on any post other than an actual friend…. And even then I hesitate. I can’t decide if it’s FB or just winter, but I’m becoming disillusioned lol
It’s both. But mostly, it’s FB. I’m quite ticked off with FB right now. It is hiding just about everyone from me.
It’s not that I’m avoiding it – I just no longer see anything of interest so I don’t bother, Well done FB!