Super Awesome Chicken Soup: Sunday, September 18, 2011

On September 11, Chris and I celebrated the start of football season and the obvious memorial anniversary the only way we know how – food and friends. The centerpiece of the meal was a beer can chicken slow cooked on the smoker for about six hours. The day and the meal were fantastic but sometimes the best part of the story is the epilogue, which brings us to the following Sunday Funday.

Chris had frozen the remains of the chicken from the week earlier with big plans to make a soup. The chicken came out of the freezer to be reinvented one week after its first appearance in our kitchen. Here is how it turned into soup…

Prep

Mirepoix - I had never heard of this term before but it is a French term for the flavor base for soups, sauces, and other dishes. In my notes, I referred to it as “mirra pruiexzlfg942hi”. Maybe I should not have mixed drinks before I started taking notes, but this was my only day off in two weeks, so find someone else to judge, darn it.

Anyways mirepoix consists of carrots, celery, and onions all chopped up for the basis of the soup.

½ package of baby bella mushrooms, quartered

“Lil bit” of bok choy, chopped roughly (roughly means chunks, not the attitude you should take when you chop. But if yelling at your bok choy helps, by all means, do what works for you)

Five (or so) garlic cloves, chopped

Cooking

               

                Heat pan, add oil

                Add the mire-whatever-you-call-it. Cook until veggies are translucent.

                Add bok choy

                Salt and pepper

                Add garlic

Add thawed smoked chicken carcass and remaining meat from last week’s super awesome beer can chicken goodness.

Add 8 cups of water (enough to cover everything)

Add shrooms

Taste for seasoning <Note: let it boil before you taste it. The adorable but impatient chef sampled the soup moments after she added the shrooms to the still cold water. Needless to say, it was, and I quote, “nasty”.>

Bring to boil.

NOW taste it… for real this time.

It definitely needs more salt (about a tablespoon total)

A bit of leftover sauce from the Hot Rod Mussels <Note: I questioned the logic of adding seafood sauce to a chicken soup but I am not one to question the chef. I just hand her stuff and take notes so I just write this down>

A little more pepper

A couple of bay leaves

Pinch of saffron

One piece of dried kelp “for a little more salt and good minerals and stuff”
Chris “I’ve got an interesting concoction going on in here!”

Teaspoon of Big Daddy’s High On Fire

Simmer and come back later to taste.

OK…

               

Let me be honest for a moment. These are all the notes I took. Seriously, the last thing on my page is “simmer and come back later to taste”. I know that more stuff happened but I must have not have been near a pen at the time. Allow me to try to recover from this neglectful oversight.

Chris’s process as listed above did not occur over a planned out session of adding specific ingredients. There were tastes, conversations, re-tastes, more conversation and more tastes over the course of well over an hour. Chris studies the flavor with each sip and considers any and all ingredients in the house, however unlikely, to be at her disposal. What I can tell you is this: whatever I missed was already in the soup. I know for a fact that she added a bit more of the Hot Rod Mussel Sauce, some salt and pepper and, of course, Big Daddy’s Hot Sauce.

The point is that she adds what she feels and what she likes. You may add a “bit of this” and a “dab of that” and come up with an entirely different flavor. Further, in all likelihood, you probably did not have mussels three days earlier to borrow leftover sauce from. This recipe is a guide but cook to your taste and from your heart and you will come up with the same success regardless of the ingredients.

Results & Final Thoughts

Disclaimers and explanations aside, this was a fantastic chicken noodle soup (oh yeah, I remember now – she added noodles at the end). The chicken’s smokey flavor permeated the soup and let us know that it was bringing us a world of satisfaction two weeks in a row.  The mussel sauce was a nice touch that honestly surprised the heck out of me. It added a depth that is usually missing from chicken soup which tends to strike me as bland at times. There was no overwhelming seafood flavor but just a slightly stronger base that combined with the smokey flavor of the chicken to create a bolder flavor than I am accustomed to out of chicken soup.

All in all, this was a unique but delicious twist on a billion year old recipe.  It is not hard to make chicken, vegetables, and stock taste, well, tasty. It is the love and creativity that take it to the next level, however, and I consider myself lucky to have been a part of this one.