Roasted chicken Soup

April’s Roasted Chicken Soup

Ingredients

1 Whole Organic Chicken (remove the innards and discard or freeze for future gravy)

Salt & Pepper (ground)

Peppercorns (whole)

Bay leaf

Fresh thyme

Fresh flat leaf parsley

2 Organic yellow onions

1 bag of organic carrots

1 stalk of organic celery

1 cup of whole organic garlic cloves (pre-peeled is ok!)

1 8oz bag of Lundberg Wild Rice (cook the whole bag, per instructions, cool and set aside)

1 can of Peeled organic san Marzano tomatoes (whole), either 12 or 15oz.

Olive or Avocado Oil

Instructions

Start off by drying the whole chicken, salt and pepper all sides including the inside cavity of the bird.  Set in a roasting pan and bake at 375 degrees for 1 hour.  For larger chickens (3.5 lbs or more) you may need 1.5 hours of baking, but be sure to temp the thickest part of the chicken to reach 160 degrees. The bird will carryover cook to 165 as it cools, but pulling at 160 will keep the bird from overcooking and drying out. Let the chicken cool completely before removing the meat. Once cooled, remove the skin (discard) and pull the meat off of the bones, as you go, pull into smaller bite sized pieces and strands.  The chicken carcass and bones then go into a stock pot for the broth base.

Next, peel all of the carrots & chop the ends off and cut to bite size, put the peels and the ends into the stockpot with the chicken carcass and set the chopped carrots aside for use later on. Chop the celery, same thing, putting the ends into the stockpot and reserving the chopped bits for later use. Peel one of the onions, chop into quarters, and toss into the stockpot.  Toss ½ cup of the whole garlic cloves into the stock pot along with 3 tbsp. of salt, 1 tbsp. of whole peppercorns and 2 Bay leaves.  Add water to about 2 finger widths from the top of the stockpot.  Turn on high, bring to a boil, then turn down to Low and simmer for 4 hours (more if you want a richer stock).  If you opt to cook 4+ hours, add a bit more water at the halfway point, usually 2-4 more cups is good to avoid over reducing the broth as it simmers.

Once the stock is rich and simmered, drain the solids off, reserving only the liquid into a clean stockpot.  Next up is roasting the chopped vegetables.  One a large sheet pan, add the carrots & celery you chopped earlier along with the other ½ cup of whole garlic cloves, and one chopped yellow onion.  Toss lightly with about 1 tbsp. of either olive or avocado oil, 1 tsp. of salt and 1 tsp. of ground pepper.  Roast in the oven at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes, flipping the veggies half way to evenly brown.

Once the veggies are done roasting add them to the stockpot with the drained broth. Bring to a boil, once boiling turn to simmer and add in the san Marzano tomatoes, squishing the whole tomatoes into smaller bits as you go, add the residual sauce in the tomato can as well, this only adds more flavor!  Pull the leaves off of 10 fresh thyme stems, hold the bottom of the stem, cup your fingertips around the base, and pull up to pull them all off at once.  Remove the stems and chop the entire bunch of flat leaf parsley and add to the simmering stockpot. Add in the pulled chicken meat, cooked wild rice and let simmer another 10 mins, turn off and let cool 15 minutes before eating, it will still be very hot!

Optional: Garnish with some red pepper flakes for heat, but that is optional. Some of my family members like to sprinkle a little parmesan on the top, that enhances the roasted-nutty flavor, but is also optional.