My Chicken Soup

I haven't contributed a lot to this book besides my pasta sauce, so I thought I'd share this with you. For some reason, chicken soup takes me about two days to make. I'm not that slow but I cook the chicken, veggies and whatever, strain everything then chill the broth and remove the fat and basically, start over.

Author: Gerry Rao

Ingredients

1 frying chicken cut up plus one whole chicken breast with bone
1 or 2 medium onions unpeeled and quartered
1 or 2 carrots
2-3 stalks of celery with green leafy tops cut in pieces
2-3 cloves of garlic
soup noodles-your choice
parsley
Pecorino/Romano cheese grated

Instructions

In a large stockpot put chicken pieces, vegetables and garlic. Cover with cold water (I don't know how many cups since I never measured it just cover the chicken).
Bring to a boil and skim off foamy residue.
Reduce heat to simmer and add onions, carrots, celery salt and peppercorns.
Partially cover and cook over low heat about 2 hours.
Remove from heat.
Remove all veggies, I throw these away. Remove skin and bones from chicken and cut into chunks.
Refrigerate chicken in a separate bowl.
Strain broth into a clean large pot and refrigerate.
When cold, the fat will solidify and can be removed. This makes a large amount of broth, which I divide, into 1 or 2 cup packages for other soup bases or rice.
To the remaining broth add sliced carrots simmer until tender.
Cook noodles in a large pot of boiling water until almost done, add to broth and the chicken.
Serve with a lot of Pecorino cheese.

Notes

My mother-in-law often took some of her meatball mix and made very tiny meatballs, about the size of a nickel. She would bring stock to a boil and add the meatballs, skimming the off the foam. Add these to your chicken soup some time. Talk about comfort food.