Susan was a bit under the weather and I cooked her up a batch of special chicken soup, it was spectacular (credit to Melanie).
Seriously, best soup ever, got a bit of a kick if you like it that way.
Here is the recipe if you want to try it:
Entire chicken plus extra necks and backs. If those aren’t available then use extra wings.
Fill the pot with cold water add a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar and lots of sea salt. Add a large quartered onion, a generous handful of parsley, a mess of carrots and celery, several sprigs of thyme, and simmer away.
Cull out the breasts after they’ve essentially “poached” for 45 minutes to use later in the soup. Simmer until the bones are falling apart (2.5 – 4 hours or more). Strain the broth, pick-out the good chicken pieces for the soup and discard all the solids.
Throw in sliced onions, cut-up Chinese cabbage, sliced carrots (you’ve discarded the old ones that got boiled to death) and cut-up kale.
Smash a lot of ginger to add flavor.
It takes 15 minutes or so to simmer the veggies enough to be tender.
1.5 cups of Red Split Lentils cooked separately in the broth and then added to the soup.
Then the real kicker is to smash raw garlic cloves into your bowl at the very end when you pour in the finished soup.
Squeeze some lemon over your bowl at the end.
Enjoy.
Hey, Joel, this sounds superb. I’ve recently been playing with Chicken and Dumplings … a southern thing that I’d heard about but never laid eyes on. I arrived in the Adirondacks at about 7:30 pm on New Year’s eve to a great batch prepared by my Memphian boyfriend. I loved it and have been doing all sorts of experiementing with different recepes. It’s basically poached chicken removed from the bone and returned to the broth (a broth much like you create in the above recipe) to whcih is added rolled flat litte squares or ribbons of biscuit dough about 15 minutes before serving. Traditionally, the northerners didn’t roll flat the dough, but added it in dollops, and kept some veggies in the broth. I love this incredibly earthy and simple dish, and we always make steamed collards along side.