Five Simmering Chickens, Five Easy Soups
Howdy Y’all. Today on Spiced Peach Blog we’re sharing the ‘Friday Five’, a feature with the Northeast Bloggers Group that includes providing a writing collection on five of anything. Grouping into fives is quite easy when it comes to food, that is, once you’ve prepared your chosen five to share.
One day each week in the winter I simmer a chicken on the stove for soup. Now it used to be that I would prepare a proper chicken stock in accompanying flavors, straining it for later use, except one day, well, I often have many of those one days in my life, but I needed to get the chicken simmering in time for dinner and had no time for the accompanying flavor additions in order to pick up my grandson, the J-Dude at the bus stop in time.
So, the stock pot got filled with cold water, the chicken flung right on into into the cold depth, brought to boiling, then burner turned to low, simply cooking ever so gently until later, guess what I learned? Well, I learned that I could still prepare a great pot of soup simply by simmering a chicken all by itself in the pot each week and that’s very close to just how I do it beginning as soon as the cold nip of chill fills the air.
Matzoh Ball Soup
Now as we all know there are many ways to cook a chicken, and perhaps as many or more ways to prepare a soup but onto the five, I’ll share five different easy to prepare soups always using the broth, while sometimes using the chicken meat, and other times, well, getting two meals out of one by reserving the meat from the little broiler for another use such as a nice Tarragon Chicken Salad, a Pasta, Chicken and Vegetable dish, a Pot Pie topped with golden puff pastry, Chicken Enchiladas, a plain Chicken Sandwich on a baguette with some arugula, among some ideas, keeping with the fives.
Lentil Soup with Lemon, Chicken and Mint
Healthy Greens Soup
Interestingly, in preparation of this Post I have been noticing that the names identifying the type of chicken used for the simmering chicken soups may be different depending on where you purchase your chicken but you are looking for the smaller whole chicken that goes by the name of broiler, frying, or small roasting chicken ranging between 3 and 5 pounds. Now you don’t want to purchase one of those big ole’ Purdue Roasting Chickens that you might cook for Sunday dinner for the in-laws, just so our feathers are all on the same style of bird. Organic broiler chickens cost more and you don’t need to take my word for it, but if you make a bird comparison, the organic bird will produce a richer broth, and, a meatier chicken, so to me, the cost comparison of the organic chicken is a better deal.
Chicken Soup with Broccoli, Kale, Scallions and Cavatappi
Soup created from a simple simmering pot of chicken each week also provides opportunities for using up some of the healthy, fresh vegetables in the refrigerator adding in whatever you have on hand and creating new combinations. Whichever way you simmer the chicken, any choice brings forth an array of comfort foods filled steaming hot into bowls, especially when the cold nip of chill fills the air.
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