I love home made soup. The stuff from the can just does not compare. It is so easy to make, just requires a chunk of time that you are home watching the pot boil. If you don’t have time immediately following the eating of a roasted chicken or turkey, you can wrap it up and stick it into the freezer.

What do you need:

Chicken carcass
Water
Onions
Garlic
Salt
Carrots
Rice or Noodles
Frozen Corn Niblets

Toss your chicken carcass into the stock pot. Cover with water. There wasn’t that much meat left on ours so I also tossed in a few uncooked chicken thighs. If you prefer white meat, you could toss a chicken breast or two into the pot.

I am beginning to think organic is another word for dirty. Scrub your veggies before you put them into the pot.

I cut the end off the celery and toss that part in to make stock. The good part of the celery I save to chop and put into the actual soup. I also peel two onions, quarter them, and put them into the pot. This way the broth gets a nice flavor, but my ears are spared the whining of children who can not abide actual pieces of onion in their soup. A couple whole cloves of garlic are nice too.

Bring the pot to a low boil and let it cook all day. Periodically, check the water level and add more if necessary. I rarely have time to make the soup stock AND the soup in the same day. So around dinnertime I turn the pot off, let it cool a bit and then put the entire thing in the refrigerator.

The next morning I pour the soup through a colander. This is my least favorite part of soup making, picking out the bones.

You will be left with your chunks of chicken. Dump them back into the pot with the broth.

Slice up your carrots.

And your celery. If you have helpers like mine this should only take you a few hours.

You will want to use a heavy hand with your salt shaker. Some freshly ground pepper is a nice addition, too. Let this cook on the stove top until the carrots get soft, a couple hours.

If you will be using rice or noodles cook them in a separate pot and add after they are cooked. Otherwise they will soak up too much broth. I had rice left over from dinner the previous night and dumped that in along with half a bag of frozen corn. I added these in about thirty minutes before we were going to eat dinner.

Turn the pot off and cover.

Salt to taste at the table. Serve with a thick crusty bread.

Mmmmmm.

I dare you not to sing Maurice Sendak’s Chicken Soup with Rice while you serve it.