Chicken Carcass Soup

Once a week we roast a chicken and have a comforting, family-friendly roast chicken meal - usually on a Sunday. It's one of my favourite times during the week. Everyone is sitting happily around the table, chatting and eating, and the only complaint I hear is from my youngest telling me for the umpteenth time that he doesn't like roast potatoes. 

We've recently gotten into a weekly habit of making soup out of the carcass and it's been so delicious and nourishing, especially at this time of year, that I wanted to share the recipe. Bone broth is packed with nutrients including vitamins, minerals, collagen and keratin. It's also a great way to use up every last bit of food waste from the leftover roast. Food waste as we all know is so important to be aware of and try our best to improve.

Here's our chicken carcass soup recipe - I hope you try it!

What you'll need:

1 tbsp olive oil

Chicken carcass, remove and reserve any leftover meat from the bones

4 Carrots (two to flavour the stock and two for the soup)

4 Celery sticks (two to flavour the stock and two for the soup)

4 medium Onions (one to flavour the stock and one for the soup)

2 litres of Water

1/2 tsp Salt

Spaghetti, broken into 1 inch pieces

Chicken stock cube

How to make it:

Break the chicken carcass up roughly with a knife or kitchen scissors. In a large pot heat the oil over a medium-high heat and add the bones. Fry for a few minutes until browned. Add the roughly chopped carrots, celery and onion and fry for a minute with the bones. Then add the water and salt and simmer for 90 minutes. The broth can be simmered for as long as 12 hours and even up to two days but we find 90 minutes is plenty of time to extract lots of goodness.

Next use a fine sieve to remove the vegetables and bones from the broth. Add the broth back to the pot and add the celery, carrots, onions, stock cubes and broken spaghetti and simmer for 20 minutes. Add the cooked chicken reserved from the bones and simmer for a further 3 - 5 minutes just to heat the chicken through.

When the vegetables and pasta are cooked through and the chicken is warmed taste for seasoning and add pepper and more salt if required. 

Bone broth turns to a solid gelatinous liquid when cold but don't let this put you off. We eat the soup for days after and once it's heated it tastes just as delicious if not more so than the day it was made.