Chicken Soup with Vegetables and Rice
Budget Recipes Vegetables Rice Soups and Stews
This soup is a successful experiment considering it's made with store-bought chicken (I made sure it was hormone-free, antibiotic-free, free-range, etc., but it still doesn't compare to homegrown). I think I've mentioned before that I only make chicken soup when I have meat from my grandmother, because with a roast you can hide the lack of taste and color with herbs and seasonings, but with chicken soup it's harder... until now. So all the chicken parts used here (2 backs, 4 wings and 4 neck pieces) are store-bought, only the chicken breast added at the end is from a free-range chicken. I enhanced the color with a grated carrot, and the flavor with a piece of ginger (exactly!). The ginger idea came from a friend who only makes soup with store-bought chicken and recently discovered this trick. I knew how good aromatic soup is (see Vietnamese soup), but I didn't think it would work so well with store-bought chicken.
Ingredients
1.5kg chicken parts (backs, breastbones, neck, feet, wings, etc.)
1 chicken breast
1 piece of ginger (3cm)
1/2 tablespoon peppercorns
3 carrots
3 celery stalks
4 green onions
100g rice
1 tablespoon oil
How to prepare chicken soup with vegetables and rice
- Put all the chicken (including the breast) in a large bowl and cover with boiling water. Let it sit for 10-15 minutes, then drain. Rinse the meat with cold water until the water runs clear.
- In a pot, sauté 1 grated carrot, sliced ginger and peppercorns in hot oil.
- Add the chicken parts, green onion cut into segments and 2.5L cold water. Bring to a boil and let it simmer over low heat (it should only bubble gently here and there on the surface). During the first half hour of cooking, skim the soup. After 1 hour of cooking, add 1 teaspoon of salt. The soup simmers over low heat for 2.5 hours total. At the end, you can skim off some of the fat that has collected on the surface (I noticed that store-bought chicken releases more fat than homegrown, so I skimmed off several spoonfuls of fat).
- Strain the soup using a sieve lined with double-layered cheesecloth. Wash the pot and put the soup back in.
- Add the remaining carrots and celery stalks cut into cubes to the clear broth. Cook until the vegetables are well done (about 15 minutes), then add the chicken breast (boneless and skinless) cut into small cubes. Let it cook for another 5 minutes (check that the meat is cooked, it depends on how large you cut it). Adjust salt to taste.
- Separately, cook the rice in salted water according to package instructions. Ideally, the rice is added only to the bowl when serving, but if you don't have time it can be added directly to the soup.
- Serve the soup warm with vegetables and rice.
Sautéing grated carrot, ginger and peppercorns
Adding the meat, water and green onion
Soup has been simmering for 2 hours
Strained soup
Adding the carrot and celery
Adding chicken breast cubes
