Chicken soup for the soul

Well, that worked out all right.

We got supermarket rotisserie chicken (aren't these the best invention ever?!) for dinner, and I picked up an extra to make soup. I am a major soup fan, and the only soup my husband likes is chicken noodle.

I pretty much grew up on Campbell's, and even my favorite soup buffet restaurant chain has only so-so chicken noodle soup. In fact, it actually reminds me a lot of my mother's homemade chicken soup, heh. Let's just say, mild? Does that sound less deprecating than bland? Add enough salt, and you'll sense some flavor there.

Anyway, I've been looking forward to trying chicken broth in the new thermal cooker. I have a friend who simmers her meat bones all night on low to get great soup stock. I got her one of these pots as a housewarming gift, to help her not burn her house down while she is sleeping! And I know I could probably have done this with our crockpot, but was just not motivated enough.

In the interest of putting the thermal pot through its paces, I figured I would try making chicken soup. We removed most of the meat from the second chicken, reserving that for the actual soup on day 2. At 10:00pm last night, I put the 2 chicken carcasses into the inner pot of the thermal cooker; bones, skins, drippings and all. Add in the sacrificial diced onion, carrot, celery and parsley. A little salt and pepper, bring the whole thing to a boil for 10 minutes, and into the outer pot it goes. Both inner and outer lid down, and time for bed.

In the morning, the smell of the broth was HEAVENLY. It was still very warm, but knowing I was stuck on conference calls for the next 4 hours, I took the inner pot and heated it back to a boil for another 10 minutes, and popped it back into the casing. At lunchtime, I strained the whole thing and refrigerated the broth to aid in fat removal. Next time I will skip the drippings and skin to reduce the fat content.

Nearing suppertime, I reheated the broth, adding water to increase liquid volume, added the meat reserved from last night, new sliced carrots, celery and onion. Brought it all to a boil, and finally added the noodles. YUMMMM!

We will definitely be trying this again! My husband and older son kept making mmmmm sounds with every sip. Barley, of course, hating wet food, had his chicken and noodles dry, thank you.