Winter Chipotle Chicken Soup

Remember when you roasted that Cowboy Chicken? Did you roast that Cowboy Chicken? Well, you should have because then you would have Cowboy Chicken remains on hand for making the stock for this INSANE soup.

This is a winter soup if there ever was one. Spicy and warming, full of good for you bone broth and vegetables --- it’s chicken soup who made friends with some sassy smoked jalapeños. The chipotles warm the chilliest of souls and bones.

Pro tip: freeze everything.

When thinking about this soup, the immediate thought is to go straight to traditional mexican/latin vegetables and flavors. But as mentioned on Monday, my cooking is now much more controlled by the seasons. This meant --- no fresh peppers, no fresh tomatoes, no fresh corn. While it seems inhibitive, cooking with the seasons only makes me feel more creative. So I embraced the winter season and went with onions, carrots, delicata squash, and kale for my vegetables. 

I’m cheating a little bit with the avocado for garnish as it is for sure not local, but I’ve professed my undying love for them before, so you understand, yes?

As with most soups, it’s better the next day, surprisingly I found that the chipotle mellows out a bit. 

Lastly! I’ve realized that I’ve really only been posting chicken after chicken after chicken mains for months. About to get some variety up in here so soon!

---

Winter Chipotle Chicken Soup

Ingredients:

olive oil

1 onion, chopped

2 carrots, sliced

1 delicata squash, cubed into 1-inch pieces (could also sub in sweet potato or butternut squash or acorn squash)

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 chipotles, minced

3 tablespoons tomato paste

2 to 3 tablespoons of chipotle sauce (in the can with the peppers) or to taste

6 cups chicken stock**

2 cups cooked chicken**

1 cup lacinato kale torn into 1-inch pieces

1 avocado, sliced (for garnish)

Directions:

Drizzle olive oil in the bottom of a large stock pot. Over medium heat, saute onions, carrots, and squash chunks. Cook until onions are translucent and beginning to get caramelized. Add in garlic and minced chipotles and saute just until garlic becomes fragrant, about 30 seconds.

Add in the tomato paste and chipotle sauce, and stir into the vegetables. You want to begin to brown the tomato paste/sauce. Let it start to caramelize. Have your stock at the ready. It will start to brown and get stuck to the bottom of the pot. Don’t fret! Do this until you just can’t stand it anymore and then splash a smidge of chicken stock in and deglaze the pan. It will sizzle and cook off and while it does this take your wooden spoon and begin to scrape up all that browned goodness from the bottom of the pot. Deglaze a bit more as needed to scrape up all brown bits and then add in the full amount of stock.

Add in the chicken and bring soup to a boil. Lower heat to a simmer and then add in the kale. Simmer until the kale is tender to the bite, about 10 minutes.

Remove from heat and serve soup with sliced avocado on top. A squeeze of lime wouldn’t hurt if you had it. If you can stand cilantro, go for it. These pickled red onions would not be out of place. Um, sour cream? Cause why the hell not. You know?

Yield: about 8 cups

**Note: I made my own chicken stock and used the meat from the carcass. Here’s how I did it: Throw that sucker, roasted (or raw) chicken in a stock pot with some carrots, a halved onion, some smashed garlic cloves, whole peppercorns and a bay leaf, cover it all with cold water, bring to a boil, then simmer away for a couple hours. Strain the broth and set aside, pick off the meat that’s left on the carcass and set that aside to use for the soup. Ta-da! Stock!

New Year's Day Chicken Soup

I love everything about New Year’s Day (not to be mistaken with New Year’s Eve.) I am the quintessential cliche when it comes to making resolutions and seeing a bright shiny future.

I do happen to let loose many of my standards of health when it comes to the holidays. Things get overwhelmingly busy at work and in life so I truthfully eschew heading to the yoga mat as often, usually some sort of annual-right-on-schedule viral infection will throw me off course for a week (hello Christmas morning cold -- still fighting you off!) and of course, don’t get me started on the general holiday glutton. I do get a little carb happy. I mean I got four separate birthday cakes this year, FOUR! And then I made half baked blondies on top of that. And then there’s --- “Sleep? What’s that?”

I love the idea of clean slates, and starting fresh. Whether it’s metaphorical or not, the new year always gets me in the mindset of newness, a reset, improvement, evolution.

And as much research is out there that New Year’s resolutions tend to fall by the wayside and send everyone who made them into a downward spiral of defeat and failure about three weeks into January, it always sets me into the fast lane for realigning my goals for the coming year.

Having this blog has turned into a bit of a journal of sorts and I’m excited to check in again next year and see what I’ve accomplished. As far as 2014 goes, it was not my favorite year, but I did start this blog and I really like it. I’m looking forward to what 2015 has in store for me, I have a good feeling about it all...it’s bubbling at the surface. I can feel it in my fingertips.

For 2015:

start composting

take some classes at the Institute of Culinary Education

use up that gift certificate from LAST YEAR at Broadway Dance Center. I wanna be like dis girl. I’m sure three classes is enough to get me up to speed.

conquer both handstand and forearm stand in yoga

i have dreams of more visits to Austin

visit NOLA

visit San Fran

drink more water

cook more on weeknights (I’m more often than not a #putaneggonit type of girl)

read more books:

I’ve started a by accident tradition of making chicken soup on New Year’s. I just happen to run out of my freezer inventory around this time. I make a big batch and then dip into the freezer as needed throughout the year when the boy or I’m not feeling so hot.

It’s bit of a process, but it’s well worth the time for from scratch soup.

---

New Year’s Day Chicken Soup

Ingredients:

1 whole roasting chicken, rinsed and giblets removed.

2 medium yellow onions

6 carrots

1 parsnip

5 celery stalks

half a bunch of parsley

1 tablespoon whole peppercorns

1 bay leaf (I had to use 2 small ones)

water (enough to submerge bird and vegetables)

salt and pepper to taste

Take 1 of the onions and quarter it. Take 3 of the carrots and roughly chunk them or quarter them into sticks. Cut the parsnip in half separating the fat top half and the skinnier end. Set skinny half aside. Quarter the fat half. Halve the celery stalks and set the halves with the leaves aside. Throw prepped vegetables into a large stock pot. Put chicken on top of the vegetables. Add half of the parsley on top of the chicken. Add the tablespoon of peppercorns and bay leaf. Add enough water to submerge the bird and vegetables.

Bring this all to a boil and then lower to a simmer for 2 to 3 hours. Skim gray scum off the top as needed. Stock is ready when golden brown and chickeny. You'll know what I mean.

Use the time the chicken stock is cooking to prep the remaining vegetables. Dice the onion, carrots, parsnip half, and celery. Finely dice the remaining parsley. Set aside.

When stock is ready, get a second large pot and a large strainer. Put the strainer into the second pot. If it makes things easier, carefully remove the chicken from the broth and set aside. Then take the stock pot and carefully pour the broth and vegetables into the second pot with the strainer in it. This strains out the mushy overcooked vegetables and leaves you with only broth in the second pot.

Now shred your chicken from the bones. If the chicken has been cooked long enough it should practically shred itself. Remove all the meat from the chicken carcass. 

Add the shredded chicken to the broth, along with newly prepped vegetables. Add salt and pepper to taste. (I also added an extra cup of water, do so if you think it's needed) Bring all to a boil and then simmer until vegetables are tender. About 20 minutes. Turn off heat and stir in the finely chopped parsley.

Makes about 8 cups

Escarole Sausage Soup with Cranberry Beans

I’m still mourning the end of my beautiful, lovely, first year of my CSA. My last pickup was about a month ago. Although, somehow, my fridge is still overflowing with vegetables.

I’ve got bundles and bundles of chard, kale, and carrots. Pretty yellow carrots which, I might add, I am having a hard time eating just because they are so pretty. It's a problem of mine, see here.

The escarole and beans in this soup below were from my farm share. I’d never encountered the beans previously. Although, now I have been spotting those pretty pink thangs all over the farmer’s market. If you can’t find the beans or the escarole at the greenmarket, just sub in another leafy green, like kale or chard and some dried or canned cannellini beans

In New York, it is going to be GROSS and rainy this weekend. While I am staunchly pro-sunshine --- cold, rainy, winter weekends do give me a nice excuse to catch up on several episodes of The Wire and get all sorts of cuddly with the boy and the cat, because obviously I am also staunchly pro-snuggling.

A warm bowl of soup really rounds out the picture, don’t you think?

---

Escarole Sausage Soup with Cranberry Beans

Ingredients:

1 pound hot italian sausage, squeezed from casing

dash of olive oil

1 small onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

4 cups chicken stock

2 cups water

approx. 2 cups shelled cranberry beans (can substitute dried or canned cannellini beans if desired)

salt and pepper to taste

1 teaspoon oregano

½ teaspoon paprika

1 bay leaf

1 head escarole, torn into bite sized pieces (can also use any other winter leafy green - they may need more cooking time however.)

shredded parmesan for garnish (if desired)

Directions:

In a large pot over medium heat brown sausage until no longer pink. Scoop sausage onto a plate and set aside. Add a dash of olive oil to the sausage fat and then add the chopped onions. Scrape up the brown bits from the sausage while stirring the onions, coating them in fat. Saute onions until soft and translucent. Add garlic to onions and saute until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the sausage back in, along with beans. Lastly, add in the broth and water. Season with salt, pepper, oregano, paprika, and bay leaf.

Bring soup to a boil, then lower to a simmer. Cook until beans are soft and creamy, about 45 minutes. If you substitute canned beans, they will only need about 15 minutes to warm through. Stir in escarole and let wilt into soup, approximately 5 minutes. Remove bay leaf before serving.

Serve with grated parmesan on top, if desired.

Yield: approximately 8 cups