Chicken Soup - Guest Post

Chicken Soup.

It's the standard for bringing to loved ones who are under the weather.

And I can even handle the pandemic; I've figured out a suited-up-scrubbed down routine for cooking for others.

But a year ago my dear friend Deb moved A HUNDRED MILES away!

I'm a right-lane, speed-limit, take-a-break-every-hour kind of driver, so it takes me two hours to get there. And a four hour round-trip is too much right now. On top of making soup. So I offered to do a guest post for her blog/website, instead.

Hello, I'm Legne Hardt, and this is my take on Chicken Soup.

Deb lives what I like to think of as my fantasy homesteading life. All the things that I dream I might do, if I had the time and space, she really does, making the time, cramming it into the space she has. (Lovely that she has acreage now, but wow! What she did on an in-town lot!)

There are a few things I manage in my suburban life, though, that, when I take a look at them, are just a little bit homesteady.

And they link together to make great chicken soup.

Whenever I get chicken thighs, I get skin-on, bone-in. Why pay more and be missing the best parts, after all? I strip off the skins, and lay them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. They get sprinkled with salt and popped into the oven at 300 degrees. Once the fat starts rendering, I pour it into a ramekin. It takes a few pours before the skins start getting crispy. We love eating them(so do the dogs!) but the real treasure is the golden schmalz. I keep it in the fridge, next to my lard and tallow. It is the perfect ingredient for starting chicken soup.

A lot of the vitamins and minerals in vegetables need to be consumed with fat, to be properly utilized by our bodies. So I always start my chicken soup with melting a generous spoonful of schmalz to saute my celery in. I like matching up the fats I cook with to the protein I'm using. Bacon grease for ham and bean soup, tallow for beef tacos. Schmalz for 'butter' chicken, and of course, chicken soup.

Once the vegetables(celery, carrots, and garlic. I'm a purist!) are sauteed I add just enough water to boil them and the cubed turnips.(Okay, not so much of a purist! No noodles or rice for me, not in chicken soup.) Then the cubed chicken gets slipped in. I use the thigh meat, as for me, chicken breast should be reserved for salad and sandwich use. I cut it off the bones while the veg was starting, and there's always meat left on the bones, as I am not a proficient butcher.

But that's okay, because I throw the bones into the freezer, and when I have enough, I make stock.

Homemade stock is such a blessing to make for yourself. It is good for you, and you get a little glow of virtuous happiness, every time you use it. I make mine in the Crockpot. About once a year I buy a mess of frozen chicken feet, and a couple-few of those go into the pot first. I learned the hard way NOT to put them in last. If you do, it will look like they are trying to claw their way out from under the glass lid. I'm a determined and unrepentant omnivore, but there's no sense torturing your sensibilities.

Then all the bones I've been collecting in the freezer go on top of the feet. There is usually the carcass of a rotisserie chicken to add to the fresh/frozen bones, and since we are savages, there are also the bones of cooked chicken that we have eaten from. There are probably health and hygiene reasons not to do this, but I do it anyway.

I cut a yellow onion(with paper skin still on, and if I have extra skins floating around in the bowl, they get tossed in as well) into quarters and throw it in, along with a lemon cut into slices. Then a whole head of garlic(peeled, but not chopped) and two or three bay leaves. Water to fill(it is one of those enormous Crockpots, oval, that you can get a whole roast into), and I bring it to boil, and then turn it down for a simmer. I start it up in the morning, so I can top it up with boiling water before I go to bed. The next morning all the solids get sieved out, after a full twenty-four hours of simmering, and I have pints and pints of lovely chicken stock. It gets chilled until I can skim off the fat, and then frozen.

It is two of those frozen pints of chicken stock that get pulled out for my soup. If I remember, I take them out before I start with the schmalz. Then they defrost enough to just slide into the pot when needed. If not, there's a quick dip into warm water, and some desperate spatula work, but one way or the other, I add the stock to the veg and chicken and let it all meld together for about half an hour, just bubbling gently, and filling the kitchen with its lovely aroma.

Last, I chop parsley and celery leaves and throw them in with some salt to taste.

Salt to taste. Such a sly instruction in most cookbooks. We all have different ideas of what the proper amount of salt is. I like to taste, add a little, let it dissipate for about five minutes, then taste again. It's a process not to be rushed.

And nor is chicken soup. Though I'm using schmalz and stock that is made ahead, it still takes a good two hours minimum, to get a good soup.

But when you taste that first spoonful, you know it was worth the doing, and the wait. Worth taking the time for, or squeezing in to the time you have. Either way, it's a bit of homesteading heaven.