Based on "Chicken Soup that Flu (sic) the Coup" from The Looneyspoons Collection: Janet & Greta’s Greatest Recipes / Serves at least 6
See my tips below before purchasing ingredients /making the soup.
2 tsp olive oil
1 cup each chopped onion, carrots and celery
1 tsp minced garlic
1.5 tsp dried thyme and 1 tsp dried marjoram
6 cups reduced sodium chicken broth
2 plum tomatoes, chopped
1/2 cup chopped celery leaves
2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp each salt and pepper
6 bone-in chicken thighs, skin removed (about 1.5 lbs / 680 g)
Heat olive oil in a large pot over medium high heat. Add onions, celery carrots and garlic. Cook and stir until vegetables begin to soften - about five minutes.
Stir in thyme and marjoram and cook 30 more seconds.
Add broth, tomatoes, celery leaves, bay leaves, salt** and pepper. Bring to a boil.
Add whole chicken thighs. Reduce heat to low and simmer covered for 30 minutes.
Carefully remove chicken thighs from pot. When cool enough to handle cut meat from bone and chop into bite-size pieces. Discard bones and return meat to pot. Remove bay leaves. Serve hot.
Notes and Tips...
Onions and Veg - as usual, a rustic chop is fine, no need to chop finely; do onions first, softening for a bit, then add carrots and celery. Only then add the garlic - that way there is no risk it will burn and ruin the flavour
Thyme - recipe calls for dried thyme, but when fresh thyme in the garden is accessible I prefer that - add up to 3 tsp of fresh thyme
Plum tomatoes - I cut these into four pieces, remove the seeds, and then chop into 1/4 cubes. They enhance the appearance, but off-season am not sure they add a lot to the flavour.
Chicken broth - if using Better than Bouillon or another salted broth, do not add additional salt as indicated in recipe; season to taste at the very end.
Celery leaves - depending on how you buy celery, this may be the leaves on top, or you may have to "dig" into the middle of the bundle of stalks to extract some leaves; I use celery hearts which have a mild taste - not sure that the leaves make that much difference, other than adding to appearance
Salt - again, take care to avoid over-salting
Chicken thighs - I have never done this soup with only 6 thighs, weighing 680 g. My grocery store tends to sell chicken thighs in a package of 9 - and that's what I buy. The soup can handle that extra meat. I suppose the quantity of meat would affect the calorie count. The thighs must be bone-in (adds to soup flavour). The skin is to be removed - presumably to reduce fat in the soup. Once I forgot to remove the skin - soup still tasted great.
De-boning chicken thighs - the recipe talks about "cutting (cooked) meat from bones" at the end. I have no idea how one would do that - just get in there with bare/clean hands. Pull out three bowls. In one, put all the meat from the soup. When it is cool enough to handle, and working over the bowl with all the meat, begin to pull the meat off the bone, breaking it into spoon-sized pieces. Put the de-boned meat into bowl #2, and the bones and "guck" into bowl #3. When all is done bowl #1 may have some veggies / broth that can be poured back into the soup pot.
Serves (at least) 6 | View related blog post, February 23, 2015 |
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