Soup Season

Soup season is upon us - cool, fall weather perfect for enjoying a warm soup with bread, cheese and a glass of wine for dinner.  So I've decided to share one of my favorite soup recipes - Potato Leek Soup.  This version uses bacon (of course there is meat in the recipe, would you expect any thing less from moi?) and heavy cream -- just in case you needed some fat content.  

To give credit where credit is due, my recipe is adapted based on this recipe for Creamy Potato Leek Soup II on Allrecipes.com.

Ingredients
8 Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and diced into big chunks
4 cups chicken stock
2 leeks, sliced and chopped
1 pound of bacon
1 cup of heavy cream
salt and pepper to taste


Preparation 
1. Peel and dice potatoes in large chunks
2. Place potatoes in a pot with the chicken stock, boil potatoes until tender (about 20 minutes)

I like bigger potato chunks so that when they cook and break apart you still have some good sized potatoes

3. While the potatoes are cooking, dice bacon and cook in a large skillet until browned (dicing the bacon makes it cook faster)

Yumm... bacon!  You can leave this out if you are vegetarian

4.  While the bacon is cooking, slice and chop the leeks

Cut the white and green parts

5.  When the bacon is nice and crispy, remove bacon with slotted spoon.  Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of the bacon drippings.  Add the leeks to the bacon drippings and cook over medium-high heat for about 10 minutes.

Stir often!

6.  At this point, your potatoes should be done.  Check for tenderness.  Then grab your potato masher (or a fork) and break about 1/2 the potatoes in the pot to create a creamy texture in your soup.

Masher + Potatoes = Creamy Soup Base

7.  Add the leeks and bacon to the pot with the potatoes and chicken stock.  Stir and then pour in 1 cup of heavy cream.

Delicious cream

8. Let the soup warm over medium heat for about 5 minutes until the flavors blend.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.
 
9. Serve immediately!  Or you can cool and freeze to enjoy later.

Big chunks and little chunks!

Whole Chicken Carcasses = Homemade Chicken Stock

In addition to belonging to a CSA through Waterpenny Farm, we buy our meat through  PolyFace, a farm that raises animals using sustainable farming practices.  It is quite an adventure to get our meat every three weeks and create enough freezer space to be able to hold everything, but I'll save that story for another day.  

When you buy PolyFace chicken, you get a whole chicken because they don't butcher it into breasts, thighs and legs.  We get to do that (or rather my husband does because I am absolutely terrible at it).  So what we do is usually defrost a whole chicken when we want to use the meat for dinner, cut it into pieces, cook what we need, store the rest and then we are left with the chicken cavity.  I started to find these chicken cavity carcasses back in my freezer, wrapped in foil.  I guess my "at home butcher" wanted to reuse these and was relying on me to figure it out.  So I did.  Whole Chicken Carcasses = Homemade Chicken Stock.

Now I make homemade chicken stock once every month or so.  It is relatively easy to make but it does take a while *and* it sort of makes your whole house stink like chicken broth.  Oh well, not everything can be glamorous.  Here's how you do it:

 1) Defrost your chicken cavity (or chicken pieces if you have leftovers you don't want to use to cook with, but definitely use pieces with bones!) and throw it in a big pot.  I usually use 4-5 chicken carcasses.  Add water to fill the pot almost to the top.

Raw chicken, neck and all but no giblets

  2) Bring the water with the chicken carcasses to a boil, skimming off the clotted blood (which is foamy and disgusting).

3) Once the water reaches a full boil, lower the heat immediately to a simmer (so that little bubbles are just breaking the surface).  

4) Add some vegetables to flavor the broth.  I usually use whatever I have on hand, so for this batch, I used some onions, zucchini, squash, and thyme.  Just use 5 or so pieces.  Don't use tomatoes though!

Vegetables in the broth adds more flavor

5) Simmer the chicken stock with the vegetables for 5-6 hours.  The aroma of chicken will fill your house - so much so, that you won't need to buy Yankee Candles as you have created your own aroma - Chicken Soup.  You can thank me later.

What's that perfume you are wearing?  Oh, that?  That's Eau de Chic

 6) Let the stock cool, remove the larger chicken pieces, and skim the fat off the top if you want.  This is the part that makes my dog come down to the kitchen and wait near the stove for me to miss the trash can.  I do every time - special treat for Webster!  Be careful of those bones though, dogs can't have chicken bones. 

7) Strain the chicken broth to remove vegetables and small chicken pieces.  I use a regular pasta strainer.

Lookin' good

 8) Now for the part that is a straight up pain.  I pour the chicken broth into little baggies and freeze.  I use to use big gallon bags, but I don't need that much chicken broth for my recipes so now I use the little bags.  You can lay them on a cookie sheet to keep them flat and once they are frozen, they are easy to store up right.

Baggies make it easy to store and use in recipes

And that's it!  Now you have your own, homemade chicken broth to use in recipes and you got rid of all those chicken carcasses wrapped in aluminum foil in your freezer.  Oh wait, I probably was the only one with that problem...  well anyway, now you can make some homemade soup with your chicken stock!