Chicken and cabbage Soup

Chicken and Cabbage Soup the Hard Way

Ido not believe and making any chicken dish using precooked chicken. If you think using pre-cooked chicken is OK, this recipe is not for you, and frankly, I weep for you.

OK, with that out of the way, here’s the recipe…

Ingredients 1 whole roasting chicken (all size will do is adjust the amount of chicken in your soup)

Herbes de Provence (plan on 1/3 of a standard spice bottle’s worth)

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Pink Salt (use regular salt if you like the taste of iodine)

Fresh ground pepper

Turnips

Parsnips

Celery Root

Chicken Broth (so I cheat, sue me!)

Good water (well water or filtered)

Cabbage (you choose the type, have fun with it)

Good quality canned peeled whole tomatoes (one of them big cans)

Roast that Chicken

This part is easy. Preheat oven to 475. Place ¼ cup of the olive oil, the herbs, and the salt and pepper (about a tablespoon each) in a Dutch oven and mix it all together into a paste of wonder. Place your bird in the Dutch oven and rub that paste all over it, inside and out. Place the

Dutch oven in the actual over with the lid off (leave the lid in your cabinet until tonight).

Roast the chicken at 475 for about 20-30 minutes or until the skin is golden brown and crispy. Then, reduce heat to 350 and cook until thigh meat is at 170 and juices run clear. Take out and let rest. Eat some if you want. You’re really only robbing the soup of its chicken. But your stomach won’t know the difference. It will smell good and you will want to eat some, trust me.

Take the cooled Dutch oven with the chicken and fatty goodness, cover it, and put it in the fridge overnight. Make that Soup You roasted the chicken, good for you! Now prepare yourself for wonderful smells the rest of the day. Place a large soup pot on the stove and dump the chicken and all the fatty goodness into that pot. Do this before you put liquid in the pot, or you will end up drenched in chicken water.

Place one of those chicken stock cartons in the pot. Fill the rest with water until the chicken is covered by about 2 inches of water (are you just now realizing that I measure nothing?). Bring to a boil and then reduce to simmer. As it steams and bubbles, use a metal mesh strainer with a handle (I don’t know what else to call it) and skim out whatever fat you can that boils to the surface.

After about an hour or two (the longer you leave it, the better it will taste), scoop out the chicken parts and place on a plate to cool. Take your strainer and strain out the rest of the solids until you have just liquid. Don’t worry if you can’t get it all, gives it character.

Peel and chop all the root veggies into small ¼ to ½ inch chunks. I like bigger chunks, but it takes a little longer to cook. Slice about half a head of your cabbage into ½ inch wide strips and chuck that into the pot with the root veggies. Eyeball it to make sure you don’t put too much in, you want soup, not stew.

Once cool, pick the chicken meat off the chicken and chuck it in the pot. Open your canned tomatoes and SLOWLY dump them in the pot. Cook the soup until the root veggies are soft. Scoop out some soup and eat. It tastes better if you’re wearing slippers. You’re probably gonna want some fresh sourdough bread to sop up some broth.

Optional: I like some heat. I usually put about a ½ to a full teaspoon of cayenne pepper powder in the pot when I first start making the stock.