Chicken & Rice Soup

Step One - make an Herbed Roast Chicken and have some guests over to eat most of it.

From there, here are the additional steps for some seriously delicious Chicken & Rice soup:

1) In a large soup pot, place the skin, carcass and bones (picked of any remaining meat) with a few cut up carrots, an onion cut into quarters, a few cloves of garlic, some parsley, salt & pepper. Celery is good if you have it, but we didn't at this point. Add cold water to the pot until it covers all of that by about an inch. Bring it to a boil and then simmer for about 4 hours:

2) After all of that has simmered for 4 hours, strain it through a fine mesh strainer to get rid of all the chunks, and then return it to the pot. You can throw out all the stuff you just strained out - the flavors have been extracted, so their work is done.

3) Cut up another 3 stalks of celery, 3 carrots, and dice half a white onion. Prepare some brown rice - we have a rice cooker, but stove-top rice works too:

4) Dump the carrots, onion, and celery into the pot with the strained stock. Bring it back to a boil and simmer until the veggies are almost as tender as you'd like them to be:

5) Add a few shakes of these spices too, while you're at it. The red pepper gives the soup a nice kick:

6) Chop up any remaining chicken meat into bit sized pieces and throw it and the rice in the pot and continue simmering until the chicken and rice are heated through:

7) Serve in a really nice soup bowl. So yummy, so winter appropriate. Plus, my house smells like heaven right now.

8) Make sure you have some crusty bread with it to mop up the dregs in your bowl. You'll really, really want to.

This makes a whole lot of soup, just FYI. We'll have leftovers for at least two more meals. I am really looking forward to it.

Olive Garden's Zuppa Toscana

When I was in high school, we had an early release day once a month, on Wednesdays. Every Wednesday for a couple of years, I would go out to lunch with my mom, and my two best friends Megan and Meghan. We always, always went out to Olive Garden and had the endless soup & salad lunch combo. It was a great ritual and I will always remember it fondly. My soup of choice at the Olive Garden was the Zuppa Toscana, a spicy sausage & potato soup with some greens and a creamy broth. I finally decided it was time to learn how to recreate it. Here's my best effort.

Ingredients, left to right: One bunch kale, washed and torn into bit sized pieces; 32 oz/4 cups chicken broth; 1/2 of one large white onion, diced small; 3 russet potatoes, cut into chunks; 1 pint/2 cups half & half; 1-2 cloves garlic, minced.

You'll also need one pound of italian sausage. The sausage makes the soup, so make sure you get seriously quality stuff. Get the spicy sausage if you like spicy foods - it adds extra kick to the soup:

Step 1: Crumble the sausage into bite-sized chunks and brown it in batches:

Step 2: Remove the sausage to a plate, then cook the onion in the same pot until softened:

Step 3: Add garlic and cook for another minute or so until fragrant:

Step 4: Add the sausage back to the pot with the potatoes:

Step 5: Add the chicken broth. If it is not enough liquid to cover the potatoes, add water as necessary:

Step 6: Bring it to a boil and simmer until the potatoes are completely cooked and fork tender:

Step 7: Add the kale and 1/2 & 1/2, then leave on the heat until warmed through. Do not boil.

Step 8: Serve and enjoy with some crusty bread:

So yummy! I officially never have to go to the Olive Garden again.

Tomato and Spinach Soup

This could be called 'veggies are my friends -- part 3.' It's just soup, so the directions are pretty general. This is what I started with -- some leftover celery from the Thanksgiving relish tray, onion, carrot, a can of diced tomatoes, spinach, chicken broth, olive oil and a few spices. It doesn't need a lot of salt, since both the tomatoes and the broth have salt in them.
I didn't start this until about an hour before I wanted to eat it, so I diced the veggies pretty small so they'd cook faster. They went into a saucepan with some olive oil and a few spices. Then I put the cover on the pot and let them sweat on medium low for about ten minutes. At this point, if I'd remembered, I'd have thrown in a generous tablespoon of flour and stirred it around for a couple of minutes. I forgot, and it was fine. The broth is a little thicker if you remember the flour. I added the tomatoes and about a cup of broth, put the cover on again and simmered for 15 minutes or so.
I used my hand blender to break up the chunks, but I didn't go so far as to puree them. I like smallish chunks in this soup.
I added another cup of broth at this point, then rough chopped a large handful of spinach. Maybe a cup and a half raw after chopping, and threw it in the pot. I put the cover on again, and let it simmer for another 5 or 10 minutes. This is a good point to taste it. If it tastes a little acid-y, you can add a teaspoon of sugar.
My house smells great, and there was enough soup for lunch and leftovers for lunch tomorrow.
Nothing fancy, just soup.