Gotta make about 5 gallons of chicken soup for a potluck a couple of weeks from now

[struggle4progress]

I thought I'd start by pressure cooking maybe 10 lbs of chicken quarters, or maybe an equivalent amount of legs or whole chickens, depending on what's cheap, then pull off and dice the meat, pick out the skin and bones, strain out residual crud, and skim the fat

But then I want to add enough carbs and veggies to make the soup interesting, without overdoing it

rice? barley? egg-noodles? diced potato? a bit of each?
celery? carrot? bit of squash? green bean? broccoli?

and how should I spice it? weather's gettin cooler, so I'm thinking maybe some warm spices -- bit of nutmeg, maybe some cumin, little touch of clove ...

any advice?

[elleng]

1. Here's an old thread w a chix soup recipe; sounds good.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x5979661

[struggle4progress]

2. thanks!

[The empressof all]

3. For the best and richest soup you need to roast the bones

I usually use only roasted chicken or parts then after removing the meat and skin I throw the bones back in the oven with celery, carrots and onions and salt a pepper. When the bones are brown then you add them to a pot of cold water with parsley, bay leaf,and the roasted veggies and salt and pepper. Bring that to a boil. When it starts to bubble lower the heat and forget about it for a while. Let it simmer away. Check for seasonings. You may need to add a bit of better than bouillon but if you roast your bones dark enough you should have a good flavor to your stock. At this point I strain the stock and then add fresh raw carrots, celery,chopped parsley, chopped leeks and potatoes. You can also add the meat that you have picked off the bones but make sure you don't add any skin or yuckie stuff.

This is the way my grandmother made the soup....It's well worth the extra effort. I've done it with the raw chicken...and I've done it with just the roast chicken without roasting the bones. Both are ok....But just not the same.

[struggle4progress]

4. that's an interesting suggestion. i may try that

[Warpy]

8. Yeah, I'd simmer those chicken quarters enough to get the meat done

and pull it off the bones, then roast the bones and dump them back into the broth to complete the flavor with a couple of hours of simmering. What I do with it next depends on the mood I'm in: sometimes it's a light chicken soup with onion, celery and carrot and a little rice and sometimes it's hearty chicken veg with baby limas, tomatoes, corn, potato, green beans and zucchini in addition to the mirepois and rice or rice noodles. Or whatever I have in the fridge. I usually want the former in summer or when I'm coming down with a cold. The latter is a winter workhorse soup.

I just wish supermarkets still carried the big trays of backs, necks and wings for soup purposes. I haven't seen those for years and I miss them.

[grasswire]

5. mulligatawny?

I made some just yesterday -- just love it. I used the cooking light recipe that is available on the internet. Mmmmmmmmmmm.

All gone.

[grasswire]

6. recipe

Note: I did not add chutney or red pepper or tomato paste. I started with poached chicken cut into 1 inch cubes and I added some cream at the end. I simmered it quite a bit longer so all the vegetables were very very soft and I smushed things with a potato masher.



Spicy Mulligatawny

1 tbls. vegatable oil, divided

1/2 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast, cut into bite-sized pieces

1 c. chopped peeled Gala or Braeburn apple

3/4 cup chopped onion

1/2 cup chopped carrot

1/2 cup chopped celery

1/2 cup chopped green bell pepper

2 tbls. all-purpose flour

1 tbls. curry powder

1 tsp. ground ginger

1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper

1/4 tsp. salt

2, (14.5 oz) cans fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth

1/3 c. chutney

1/4 cup tomato paste

Chopped fresh parsley

1. Heat 1 tsp. oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add chicken, and saute 3 minutes. Remove from pan; set aside.

2. Heat 2 tsp. oil in a pan. Add apple and next 4 ingredients (apple through pepper); saute 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Stir in the flour and next 4 ingredients (flour through salt); cook 1 minute. Stir in broth, chutney, and tomato paste; bring to a boil.

3. Reduce heat; simmer 8 minutes. Return chicken to pan; cook 2 minutes or until mixture is throughly heated. Sprinkle with parsley.

Yield: 4 servings (serving size 1 1/2 cups).

[struggle4progress]

7. mmm. that looks delish. i'd scarf that stuff down in a heart beat! thanks!

[cbayer]

9. I love a traditional chicken noodle soup

I usually roast the chicken and serve the big pieces (thighs and breasts) as a meal, then boil the rest (including the bones from the meal) for a long time. After salvaging the meat the comes off, I degrease the broth and add carrots, celery or whatever else I might have around.

I then add already cooked noodles, which you can do at the last minute.

I like thyme, salt and pepper and that's it for spices.

IMHO, you get too much chicken to broth if you add all the meat from the bird. For me, the beauty of this dish is in it's simplicity, with the broth being the star.

[struggle4progress]

11. it's for a soup-lunch 11AM potluck: it won't hurt if it edges towards the soup-stew boundary,

since the served soups with be lunch for attendees

i'll consider roasting the chicken first, though. and carrots and celery will be great in it

[cbayer]

13. I was inspired by this when I read it and made some chicken rice soup

this week. Started with a rotisserie chicken from the market. It came out really well.

Let us know how yours ends up!

[Arkansas Granny]

10. I usually cook my chicken with some onion, celery and carrot just to flavor

the broth. I usually add a bag of frozen mixed veggies (corn, peas, green beans & carrots) to the pot, also. If I'm using rice or noodles, I add them on the day I'm going to serve the soup so they don't get mushy and disintegrate into the broth. Barley might hold up better for reheating. If I was adding broccoli, I think I'd wait until the day it was served to keep the taste from getting too strong and overwhelming the other veggies.

[struggle4progress]

12. good advice on the veggies and any cabbage-like stuff (like broccoli). thanks!

[struggle4progress]

14. got 2 cut-up chickens (about 12 lb) in the pressure cooker now

[struggle4progress]

15. meat's off the bone, shredded, cooling in the juice

next i'll pick out the bones and skin
haven't decided for sure whether to roast them yet but i think i will

got celery carrots squash onions and some small red and white potatoes to add later
might slice and roast the potatoes in the chicken grease before adding to the soup

[Lucinda]

16. I've never made it in a pressure cooker before. How does it add to

flavor cooking with a pressure cooker. (Those things scare the heck out of me but my mother used one for years)

[struggle4progress]

17. The exact effects depend on what you do. The pressure cooker will get above ordinary

steam temperature inside, so you can cook stuff faster and hotter than in an ordinary pot, with less water, and in many cases you actually steam the food the food rather than simmering it in liquid. Because the pot is pretty much sealed, you also don't boil nearly as much of the aroma away

The usual use is to speed up cooking time, by getting the food much hotter, but I sometimes use mine to produce a longer cook. For example, for a pot roast, I may put a block of frozen round in the pressure cooker, with a bit of water, then bring it up to pressure and just turn it off and let it cool completely for several hours, and repeat this cycle several times, adding my carrots and potatoes and onions before the second or maybe the third cycle: this can produce either a very moist or a very dry roast (depending on the amount of water), some nice gravy, and vegetables that are infused with meat juice to the core

With chicken or turkey, pressure cooking approach can disintegrate all the smaller bones and will convert most or all of the cartilage to gelatin in solution: refrigerating the broth will leave some solid grease on top of a jelly that melts into liquid well below serving temperature, so I yank off the grease and use the jellied aspic when making the broth or gravy



Now re: Those things scare the heck out of me

It was necessary to be careful with the early pressure cookers, since if the value got clogged it was possible for them to explode. Later models got increasing layers of redundant safety features. The large one that I bought last summer has several different ways to prevent the pressure from becoming too high: first, there is the pressure rocker on the stem in the middle of the lid, which allows steam to escape whenever the pressure exceeds the desired amount; if one does not allow the stem to become clogged, this alone should be enough to prevent problems; but if there is excess pressure, there is a second mechanical pressure release valve built into the lid; and if that second valve fails, the gasket is supposedly designed to push out and release pressure if the pressure gets too high

The other primary safety issue is that one simply must not open the pressure cooker while it still contains pressured steam, since you can get ugly burns from that. This is mostly a matter of allowing the cooker to cool until the pressure rocker on the stem can be lifted slightly (say, by fork) without steam escaping under pressure, after which the pressure rocker can be removed safely. Since the liquid inside may still be superheated, I usually wait another few minutes before removing the lid. Sometimes people like to sit the cooker in a cold water bath to hasten cooling before removing the pressure rocker and opening the lid. The large one that I bought last summer has an additional safety feature in this regard: a pressure latch in the handle locks the lid on when the internal pressure is high.

I've been using pressure cookers for decades and have never had any problems, though when I was a kid I remember the mothers of two different friends did get painful superficial steam burns by opening cookers before the pressure went down inside. I think that was the sort of mistake no one ever made twice. Before I realized that the liquid inside a cooker might still be superheated after the steam pressure went down, I did once have the contents boil over when I removed the lid; but this is easy to avoid by just waiting a bit longer to take off the lid after the pressure rocker has been removed or by using a cold water bath

[Lucinda]

18. Thanks for the info! I remember one going off an making a mess when I was a child

No one was hurt. but I remember the drama well.

I may give it a try one of these days. We like one pot meals a lot, and a pressure cooker would be perfect for that...

♥ Luc

[cbayer]

19. great information. Thanks.

A lot of people who live on boats use them because they really conserve your fuel, but I have also been wary. They all tell me that they are much safer than they used to be, so I have been shopping around for one.

Your soup sounds wonderful and I bet your home smells great.

[struggle4progress]

20. put the skin and such with the disintegrating bones in a separate pressure cooker

and added water and some cumin peppercorn redpepperflake to make additional broth. got a thick very yellow broth from it on the first pass, which i strained and added to the main pot. i'mn giving it a second pass now with extra water; then i'll strain the bones and crud from it and cook the potatoes in that secondary broth tonight, i think

added some celery carrot onion garlic bayleaf thyme with crushed and diced tomato to the main pot of chicken meat and liquid

got some yellow squash and zucchini to add to the soup later