Soup day

When my reserve of Cheaters Chicken Soup starts to run low I know that it’s time for a full day of chicken roasting and soup making.  I recently happened upon a great sale on chicken, both on whole chickens and leg quarters so I stocked up and made a day of it.   

Ten pounds of leg quarters and twenty seven pounds of whole chickens, ready to become “Rotisserie” Chicken.

After five hours in the oven the entire house smelled delicious.  The skin was crispy and the meat, juicy and tender.  I let everything cool enough so that I could easily handle it.  I then got to work and put into separate bowls, the skin, the white meat and the dark meat.  I put all the bones and pan juices into a huge stockpot and along with some vegetables and garlic I rendered everything I could from the bones before discarding them, and made my Cheaters Chicken Soup. 

I don’t like to let anything go to waste especially when I can make it into something wonderful.  So I slowly cooked up the skin in a fry pan until it was delicious crackling, a perfect crunchy topping for the soup.

My freezer is now nicely stocked with the roasted chicken meat and plenty of Cheaters Chicken Soup. Using my FoodSaver I packaged the chicken meat in one pound portions so it’s ready to be used in soup or other recipes.  The Cheaters Chicken Soup I packaged two cups to a bag and froze the bags flat so that’s now available to pull out to use in recipes or for when we want a nice bowl of homemade soup.  I’ll tell you, all the soup served us well recently when Maisie had her surgery and Eammon had pneumonia as both only wanted soup to eat for a few days.  I was happy to eat the soup plain and Maisie & Eammon enjoyed it with the addition of some chicken and rice noodles.

From my original 37 pounds of chicken I ended up with:

8.2 pounds of roasted dark meat

4.6 pounds of roasted white meat

10.1 ounces of crackling and

Over 3 gallons of Cheaters Chicken Soup, fifty-one cups to be exact.

Not bad for less than $25 and a days work.

Enjoy!

Thai Chicken Noodle Soup

It’s Crazy Cooking Challenge time again!  Each month our hostess, Tina of Moms Crazy Cooking challenges the participating bloggers to search non-celebrity blogs looking for the ultimate recipe of the month.  We are then to make and feature that recipe and the blog where we found it.  This month the challenge was to find the ultimate chicken noodle soup recipe.  I almost passed on participating this month because my mind wasn’t thinking past traditional chicken noodle soup which isn’t a favorite for me as I generally strain the noodle out so to just enjoy the soup.  As a rule noodles in soup isn’t a favorite and now with Maisie’s food allergies, well I just wasn’t feeling the challenge.  Then I saw a recipe for Thai Chicken Noodle Soup on Lesa’s blog Edesia's Notebook and I knew I had found the ultimate chicken noodle soup recipe and I just had to make it.  Lesa’s soup looked delicious and simple to make and with a few little changes I knew that it could be made “Maisie safe,” delicious and perfect for us…and it was.  Maisie loved the soup as I made it and Eammon and I enjoyed it spiced up a bit with a squirt of Sriracha.  Mild or spiced up, this IS the ultimate chicken noodle soup.

My previous Crazy Cooking Challenge entries:
Mac & Cheese Challenge: Velvety Mac & Cheese
Chocolate Chip Cookie Challenge: Chocolate Chip Gingersnaps
Mashed Potato Challenge: Aloo Tikki
Fudge Challenge: Biscoff Fudge 

Thai Chicken Noodle Soup (Adapted from here)

1 TBS peanut oil
2 carrots, julienned
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 TBS fresh grated ginger
1 tsp dried lemon grass powder 
1/2 tsp turmeric 
1/2 tsp red pepper powder 
4 cups Cheaters Chicken Soup 
3/4 cup lite coconut milk 
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter 
1 lb cooked chicken meat (I used the meat from when I made my “Rotisserie” Chicken and Cheaters Chicken Soup)
3 oz dry vermicelli rice noodles, prepared according to package directions
1 TBS sugar
2 TBS fresh chopped cilantro
2 TBS fish sauce
Salt and pepper to taste
Sriracha 

In a medium stockpot, heat the oil over medium heat.  Add the carrots and cook until slightly softened.  Add the garlic and ginger and cook for 1 minute until it is fragrant.  Add the lemon grass powder, turmeric and red pepper powder and stir fry it for 1 minute.  Add the chicken broth, coconut milk, peanut butter, chicken meat and cooked noodles.  Bring to a low boil, cover, and simmer for 15 minutes.  Stir in the sugar, cilantro and fish sauce.  Season with salt and pepper.  Serve and add Sriracha to taste.

Enjoy!