My Grandma Birdie (...okay, okay, her name was Lynette G. Robb, and she was my dad's mom. She lived in the woods and had a beautiful home with large windows. Birds would fly into her windows sometimes and die ... and she would save them in her freezer -inside a baggie - to take to ... somewhere? I don't know, I never asked... but that's how she got the name. And I digress...) was an amazing cook. To this day I love to fill my kitchen with the familiar smells of her spaghetti, her roasts and her bone soup.
Here's how she did it:
She saved the stuff you cut off of your carrots, celery, and onion to make a stock, often using the bones from a Meijer rotisserie chicken (usually with some meat left on it). She covered that with water and simmered it for at least 6 hours if not alllllll day. She would add a few bay leaves and salt. After the stock has simmered slowly all day (do not boil hard, or your broth will be cloudy), she would strain out the bones, and veggies and leave the good broth in a bowl in the fridge (covered) over night. She would painstakingly pick the meat off the bones and toss it back into the broth. The next morning, all the fat will have risen to the top of the now congealed soup (gelatin comes from bones & is very good for you) and you can scrape that off to make your soup less greasy and better for you! She would then chop more onion, carrot and celery and add it to the soup, along with about a 1/4 cup of brown rice and some chicken bouillon.
Here's how I do it:
I save chicken and ham bones, carrot ends, celery leaves, onion peels and garlic castaways in a ziploc in the the freezer. Then, when it's soup-making time, I buy a package of split chicken breasts with rib meat. Usually very cheap. I also get a bag of carrots, an onion, a stalk of celery and some mushrooms. I prep all my veggies ahead of time so that the parts I don't want in the finished soup can go in the stock. I put all that into my crock pot and cover it with water. {Amounts of each are as desired, and should be proportional to the amount of water you're adding- I usually have a half cup of onion and mushroom each, and a cup each of celery and carrot.} I add whatever spices strike my fancy, usually sage, rosemary, thyme, white pepper, savory and salt - just a pinch of each here and there. Cook on low allllll day. At the end of the day, carefully fish out the chicken and place it on a plate to cool, so I can separate out the unwanted skin and bones. The meat will be falling off the bones by this point. Then I strain out the veggies and stray bones from the broth and put the bowl of broth into the fridge, covered, over night just like Gram. I take my abundance of meat and cube it, reserving half for the soup and the other half for another recipe (like chicken pot pie, chicken salad...) adding the meat for the soup to the refrigerated broth. The next morning, I scrape off the fat and discard it. As I return the broth & chicken to the crock, I pour it in slowly, so that any sludgey bits or tiny bones that may have snuck through the collander and have now settled on the bottom of my bowl won't get dumped into the crock. I toss any of that as well. Resume heating on low. I sauté my onion, celery and mushrooms in a stock pan on the stove with a small amount of olive oil and salt and spices. This helps them to release more flavor. Cook until onions are translucent and then add to the crock. I cook my rice separately as well, so that it doesn't absorb all my good broth. I do not use bouillon. :P I have learned to add fresh garlic to the stock process and not to the soup, for a milder garlic flavor. If you have a ham hock to add at the beginning, you won't need to add any salt at all and the flavor of your broth will be AMAZING.
This soup heals me.
and with the leftover chicken, this time, I made a pot pie - a happy one at that! :D
feeling pretty proud of my culinary accomplishments - cheap too! (actually, I made enough filling for two pot pies from my extra meat and froze the extra for another day.)
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