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Prep Time: 0 Minutes Cook Time: 300 Minutes |
Ready In: 300 Minutes Servings: 6 |
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Remember when our mothers and grandmothers used to tell us to take chicken soup when we had a cold? That same advice still holds true today. This soup is hearty enough to be classed as a main dish. Curl up by the fire with a mug of this! Read more ! Ingredients:
1 (5 to 6-pound) fowl, or 7 to 8-pounds of broilers, with neck and all giblets except liver |
10 to 12 cups water, as needed |
2 medium carrots, scraped and quartered |
2 or 3 celery stalks with leaves, whole or cut in half |
1 medium yellow onion, whole or cut in half, peeled or unpeeled |
3 parsley sprigs, preferably the flat italian type |
8 to 10 black peppercorns |
2 to 3 teaspoons coarse salt or 1 to 2 teaspoons table salt, or to taste |
Directions:
1. Clean, trim and quarter the chicken.
2. Place quartered chicken in a close-fitting 5-quart soup pot.
3. A whole chicken should fit into a 6 to 7-quart pot.
4. Add 10 cups water if you use broilers or 12 cups if you use a fowl.
5. Water should cover chicken.
6. Cover pot and bring to a boil.
7. Reduce to a slow simmer and skim foam as it rises to the surface.
8. Soup should cook at a simmer.
9. When foam subsides, add all remaining ingredients with only 1 teaspoonful of salt.
10. Cook chicken until it is loosened from the bone.
11. ***** If chicken is quartered, allow 1 1/4 hours for cooking broilers and 2 1/2 to 3 hours for a fowl.
12. *****If you cook the chickens whole, allow an extra 15 minutes for broilers and 30 minutes for the fowl.
13. Add more water during cooking if chicken is not seven-eighths covered.
14. Turn chicken 2 to 3 times during cooking.
15. Add salt gradually, tasting as the soup progresses.
16. Adjust the salt to your preference.
17. Remove chicken, giblets, and bones and set aside.
18. Pour soup through a sieve, rinse pot, and then return soup to pot if it is to be served immediately.
19. Skim fat from surface of soup if it is to be served without being stored.
20. ================================
21. Soup can be prepared in advance up to this point.
22. If you are going to store the soup, strain it over a bowl but do not skim.
23. Cool thoroughly, uncovered, then cover and place in refrigerator.
24. Store wrapped chicken separately in the refrigerator.
25. Discard (or nibble on) giblets, bones, and soup vegetables.
26. Chicken can be reheated in soup, either in quarters with bones and skins for a hearty dish, or trimmed of bones and skin and cut into smaller, easily spooned pieces.
27. ENJOY! (and feel better real soon!) :+D
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