Tons of Chicken Soup

Each year, when Passover arrives, I pull out my two biggest pots and make chicken soup, lots and lots of chicken soup.  I don’t use a recipe.  Rather, I look around and grab almost every vegetable in site.  I did that, this year, and once again, we had superb soup.  It always amazes me, how the same soup tastes better on Passover than the rest of the year.

I end up freezing containers of soup except for the soup, we use, in the immediate following two days.  I take these containers out of the freezer, as I need them and I always add fresh vegetable to the ready-made soup.  That gives the soup a wallop of flavor.  
Usually, I use nothing but fresh vegetables and chicken.  I experimented with each batch, this year and one of those I made a little bit Thai.  I added some soy sauce and cut up ginger and it took on a subtle flavor.  No rice on Passover, for us, so I made Pesach noodles out of egg, potato starch and water and we had mock noodles in our soup.

As you can see, I made this soup, plain, no vegetables, no chicken but yes kneidlach.

Chicken Soup with lots of Vegetables

I am going to give you the ingredients for only one pot.

Ingredients

• 1 chicken for each pot (In this case, I bought packages of bottoms and used from 4-6 in each huge pot.
• water 3/4 up the pots
• 3 stalks celery, cut into chunks
• 2 onions, cut into quarters (I used large onions)
• 1 sweet potato, cut into chunks
• 1 turnip, cut into chunks
• 3 parsnips, each cut into 3 pieces
• 5 carrots, cut into 3 pieces, each
• 2 tablespoons fresh parsley
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon dried basil
• 2 turnips, cut into chunks

Directions

Place chicken in a large pot and cover with water.  Heat water and then lower to a simmer.  Cook 2 hours.

Put all the vegetables in the pot except the parsley.  Cook  for another 40 minutes, again simmering.

Add parsley and seasonings and cook for another 30 minutes.

Remove vegetables from pot.  If you want to serve with vegetables, put in new ones and cook until they are done, about 20  minutes.  Cut them into smaller pieces than the chunks.  You can chop them or make them slightly bigger.

Remove the chicken and break into small pieces and return to soup.

Put into bowls and enjoy this.

This is linked to Sunday Night-Soup Night

Soup Vegetable Muffins

After making two giant pots of chicken soup, I had lots of soup vegetables, left over.  Rather than throw them out, I put them in the refrigerator, hoping I would think of something to do with them.  My husband is the hero and suggested patties and offered to get the muffin tins, for me.  Silly me asked him which he wanted, vegetable pancakes or muffins and he started to say the pancakes until I frowned and said, “They’re fried.”  Muffins of a type is what we got and they were definitely baked.

I am going to do my best to re-create this recipe .  It was one of those that I put ingredients in, as I thought of them.

Soup Vegetable Muffins

Ingredients:

About 3 cups of assorted soup vegetables – carrots, onions, sweet potato, turnip, celery and parsnip.

1 cup potato starch

1 cup ground walnuts

(no seasoning since the soup had plenty)

2 eggs  (add more potato starch if you think the mixture is too wet.)

1-2 teaspoons dried parsley to sprinkle on top

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 35o degrees F.

Take cooked soup vegetable and put them through the food processor until you have a smooth blend.  There will be liquid from the soup even though you should drain it, first.

After removing it from food processor, drain again and put in a large bowl.  Add potato starch and eggs and mix well.

Spray muffin tins with olive oil and pour muffin batter into cups.  Bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes.

Believe it or not, you end up with a little wet but delicious “muffins”.  You can add anything you want to the recipe.

This is linked to  $5 Dinner Challenge       Real Food Wednesday