Roast Chicken Soup

By Joanne Rigutto

When you roast a chicken, unless you have several people to eat it, you may be stuck eating chicken for a while or freezing the leftovers and risk them disapearing into the black hole that a freezer can become....

In the interest of 'Waste not - want not' I usually use the leftovers for chicken salad and soup. The chicken salad recipe can be found ....here. But there's still soup.

Here then, is my recipe for roast chicken soup.....

1 roast chicken carcass with meat
Roast vegetables including sweet potatos, regular potatos, carots and onion
Leftover chicken gravy
Leftover stuffing
Chicken broth or stock to cover

Pick the carcass of as much meat and fat as you can and place the meat and fat in a crock pot.
Put all of the leftover roast vegetables in the crock pot.
If you have any stuffing and/or leftover gravy place that in the crock pot too.
Put the bones, and cartilage in a jelly strainer bag or piece of cheese cloth and tie into a bundle, you can use a piece of cotton cooking string to tie the neck of the bag closed. Place in the crock pot. The jelly strainer bag or cheese cloth will make removing the bones and catrilage easy when the soup's done.

Cover with chicken broth. Put your crock pot on high and simmer for several hours. Occasionally, agitate the soup with the bag of bones. When the soup nice and hot, season with salt and pepper, remove the bag with the chicken bones*, and serve the soup and vegetables over home made egg noodles.

* If you're using a jelly strainer bag empty the bag, rinse in the sink, then wash with the laundry. You can wash the bag, dry and save for the next batch of soup. If you use a piece of cheese cloth, just throw it away, it'll probably fall appart if you try to run it through the washing machine.