It's a cold Autumn afternoon and you're craving a warm, filling, inviting and familiar soup. Chicken soup sounds like the perfect thing, the kind that those legendary grandmothers used to make. Chicken Noodle Soup made from scratch is just too much work for something so boring, no matter how delicious. So here's the perfect soup for you.
Roast Chicken, Vegetable, and Gnocchi Vegetable Soup
For this recipe, you're going to need:
One whole roasted chicken.
It can be a leftovers, as long as there's enough meat left on it. Leftover turkey will work great as well. Best solution: Get one of these prepared roasted chickens from the supermarket deli. Cut the chicken up, and put into an appropriated sized stock pan. (ie, whatever amount you end up making, should not take up more than 3/4 of the pan.). Put the chicken in the pan, and add enough pre-made broth to cover the chicken. Turn the heat on medium high, and remember to stir. You should also remember that there are more settings on your stove than on and high. Temperature control is critical.
While you're waiting for the chicken and the stock to come to a boil do the following:
Prep your vegetables and add them to the soup:
Celery. Get one of those bunches, cut off the bottom root part, and then cut of the tops and set aside. Cut the celery down the center lengthwise, then stack them up and cut them into 1/2 inch pieces.
A small bag of baby Carrots. You can use normal carrots, but this way you skip the work of peeling, all you have to do with this is cut them into four pieces, so they're about the same size as the celery
Add the carrots and celery to the soup, the celery tops, along with five peppercorns, a bay leaf, a spring of thyme, rosemary. If you have cheesecloth or twine, tie them all together and then put them into cloth. This makes it much easier to take out later on, but otherwise you can just toss them in and pick them out when you pull out the bones.
Add water or more stock to cover all the ingredients, and the put at a lid on it, set the stove to high. Remembering to stir every 5-10 minutes, bring to a light boil and simmer until the vegetables are not quite done. Pull out all chicken bones with a slotted spoon. (the best way to do this is to strain it out and put into a cold bowl so you can handle it with out burning yourself.). Once you've picked out all the bones, cartilage, et cetera.. add it all back in and bring the soup back up to a light simmer.
Meanwhile
Saute one large, diced yellow onion in olive oil on high heat, stirring constantly. Do not leave the pan for a moment unless the pan is off the heat! Season lightly with kosher salt and white pepper, and cook the onions until they become a rich caramel brown color. Then add two teaspoons of minced garlic, saute another minute, then add a couple sprigs of thyme and basil that have been finely chopped. Take off the heat, and add the mixture to the soup. At this point the soup close to finished. All you have to do at this point is add a package of prepared gnocchi from the store, and once they float the soup is done cooking. To enhance the flavor of the soup, honestly I like to use some bouillon, yeast extract, or chicken stock concentrate, but you can just stick to "all natural" ingredients. Semantics aside, the soup will taste a lot better.
To Serve:
Ladle the soup into bowls, top with finely chopped italian parsley, and serve with bread and butter. Best served with dry white wine or a lighter bodied ale or pilsner.
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