Don’t Throw Away the Chicken Carcass

Has it even been a month since the last recipe? Who knows. But we welcome all content here. Besides, it's a semi-recurring bit now, and those are few and far between for us. So here's your next G:TB Recipe of the Month.

Whether you bought a chicken roaster at the grocery store or you roasted one for Sunday dinner, don’t throw it away. Make soup. (from the carcass) No its not soup season. I probably make more soup than anything else. My freezer is full of little containers labeled with the type of soup it is. Soup is one of the easiest things you can make, the cheapest, and can be popped out of the freezer for lunch, easy dinner, etc.

Asian Chicken Soup

Need:

Chicken carcass

Water

Onion

Garlic

Mushrooms

Swiss chard

Soy Sauce

Cayenne Powder

Udon noodles (not to be confused with national title winning Uconn noddles. - lame ass TJ joke)

Cover a chicken carcass with tap water

Simmer until the bones and meat are falling apart.

Drain the liquid and save it in a bowl. You now have a poor man’s stock. (real stock would have onions and vegetables in it, but you will add those to your soup)

Pick out all the meat and toss into bowl with stock and discard bones and skin and fatty parts. Or have your kid do this.

Sautee 1 large onion or 2 small onions and a few cloves of garlic in the same pot you made your stock.

Add in your stock/chicken you saved in a bowl. (depending on how much water you added you might not need all of it—you can save some for other stock uses—it freezes well)

Add in chopped swiss chard or other greens (bok choy, spinach, kale)

Add in chopped mushrooms

Add in soy sauce to taste. I used the annoying little packets that were floating around in the back of the fridge.

Add in spice—cayenne, chili powder, a dash of thai chili paste, etc

I didn’t have ginger, but ginger would be good here.

If you are eating carbs, add in udon (uconn) noodles.

Top with cilantro, lime juice.  

The awesome thing about making chicken soup is you can have a completely different recipe with the same process if you add in carrots, celery, peas, and turnips with thyme and oregano and take out the veggies and soy sauce above. Super traditional chicken soup. Or add in black beans, tomatoes, corn, peppers, and onions for a tortilla soup. And they all give you a lot of soup to eat/freeze with something that could be easily be tossed.