Whole chicken soup
Find RSPCA Assured Chicken at Your Favourite Supermarket
Ingredients
- Leftover RSPCA Assured chicken carcass
- 2 large carrots
- 1 leek
- 2 celery sticks
- 1 onion
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 1 tin of red lentils
- Bay leaf
- 1 tsp of peppercorns
- Parsley
- Thyme
- Salt and pepper for seasoning
Tips
- Add torn parsley to serve and accompany with crusty bread and butter.
- Try swapping out the red lentils for noodles, diced potatoes or pre-cooked pearl barley.
Method
- Remove any excess meat left on the carcass and set aside for later. Depending on how much you have left on your carcass (and how meaty you like your soup), you may need to supplement the leftovers with an extra packet of RSPCA Assured chicken breasts.
- Chop the carrots, leek, celery and onion into small cubes (or larger chunks if you prefer), and sweat in a frying pan until the onion starts to turn golden. Remove from the heat and set aside.
- Chop up the carcass using kitchen shears or a sharp knife so that all the pieces can be laid mostly flat in a pan then brown the carcass pieces in a frying pan over a medium heat with a little oil.
- Add the browned pieces along with the herbs, seasoning and whole garlic cloves to a large pan, topped up with water, then simmer on a low heat for 60 minutes, making sure that it doesn’t come to a boil. Keep an eye on the pan and remove any excess fat that forms on the surface of the broth.
- While this is simmering, prepare the chicken. If you didn’t have much chicken left earlier, now is the time to cook some more. Brown the meat in a frying pan and then add a little water until it is cooked through to the centre. You can either chop it into chunks with a knife or if you prefer shredded chicken, use two forks to pull the meat apart, going with the grain of the muscle.
- Once the broth has developed a nice chickeny flavour (if it’s still watery after 60 minutes, allow it to cook for a little longer), remove the carcass pieces and use a fine strainer to remove any remaining bone fragments, peppercorns and bay leaves.
- Now add the vegetables and chicken to the broth, along with the red lentils, and simmer for a further 20 minutes.
- Season to taste and stir everything together, making sure that everything is cooked through.
