Tammy asked me to post my recipe for the chicken noodle soup that I posted on the CF on the What's For Dinner thread. It's pretty well a standard soup recipe and nothing original other than that I like to roast the bones, the garlic and onion when making the stock.

Here we can buy stripped chicken carcasses packaged in twos in the supermarket, after they've removed most of the meat for their trays of wings, breasts etc. But there's still enough meat on the bones for a good flavourful soup.

Soup Ingredients:

Homemade chicken stock - about 2 quarts

2 carrots - diced

2 stalks celery - diced

1 leek - diced

1 cup diced rutabaga or orange squash

1/2 cup fine soup noodles

salt & pepper

oil or chicken fat

Ratio of solids to stock should be about 2 cups stock to 1 lb chopped vegetables. Add any more chopped veg if you don't have enough.

Stock ingredients:

1 meaty chicken carcass or piece of whole chicken

2 heads of garlic

1 onion - cut in half

celery stick - sliced

1 carrot sliced

fresh thyme - large sprig

1 bayleaf

black pepper & salt

MAKING STOCK:

1. Early in day or day before:

Preheat oven to 350F. Cut top off heads of garlic. Place on roasting pan together with chicken carcass and sliced onion and drizzle a bit of oil over top of all.

(I had two carcasss to roast as they are sold this way in pairs at our supermarket. I also added a couple of beef bones.)

Roast in oven about 40 minutes or until all is toasted.

2. Put bones into a very large pot. Squeeze one head of the buttery garlic cloves into the stock pot, saving the other head of garlic for adding to the soup. Add the rest of the stock ingredients and fill pot with water to cover. Grind in fresh pepper. Bring to boil, turn down heat, put on lid and simmer for a couple of hours.

Skim off any grey residue that rises to the top.

3. Afterwards, strain the solid debris from the stock ---(REMEMBER you're saving the stock so don't pour it down the sink - as has been done LOL !).

I look through the solids and pick out the meaty chicken pieces to save for the soup. Throw away all the rest of the solid material.

Here I let it cool and refrigerate until next day when it's easy to remove solid fat from top. Otherwise continue to make soup.

MAKING THE SOUP:

1. Sauté the chopped ingredients in a frypan in a TBS of chicken fat or oil until lightly golden. Squeeze out the buttery cloves from the 2nd head of garlic and add to pan.

2. Put soup ingredients including small bits of chicken into large saucepan and add an appropriate amount of stock - about double the amount of liquid to vegetables.

Put on lid and simmerwith lid on for about an hour. Add soup noodles during last 5 minutes.

3. Check seasoning, add salt.

SharonCb