Chicken Garlic Soup

Ingredients:

• 1½ litres chicken stock, instructions for making stock from roasted chicken below
• ~300g cooked chicken, skin & bones removed
• 2 medium-sized potatoes, peeled & diced
• 2 carrots, sliced
• 8 - 12 garlic cloves half sliced, half minced
• ½ tsp caraway seeds
• sprigs of thyme
• ~30g parsley, chopped
• ~30g chives, chopped
• cream or milk
• Parmesan cheese
• butter
• extra virgin olive oil
• salt & freshly ground black pepper

Instructions:

1. How to make stock from a roast chicken carcass

   Heat a little sunflower or vegetable oil in a deep pot. Reduce heat to gentle-moderate heat and add some chopped onion to the pot to sweat for a 5 minutes. Stir in some roughly chopped carrots and celery and let sweat for a couple of minutes. Next, pick off any remaining meat from the roasted chicken carass and place in a container for later use. Roughly break up the carcass and add the broken carcass to the pot with some bruised garlic cloves, some thyme, a small piece of nutmeg, a couple of bayleafs, some peppercorns and some salt. Cover with 3 litres of water. Turn the heat up high and bring to the boil. Reduce heat to moderate and leave it to gently simmer away for 2 hours. You can skim off any fat or foam that forms - but honestly it’s not essential. Finally, pass the contents of the pot through a sieve into a deep bowl. This is your stock and you can discard what is left in the sieve.

2. Make the soup

   Heat some olive oil in a deep saucepan. Add in a knob of butter. Once the butter has melted, reduce the heat to gentle-moderate and add the sliced garlic. Stir around for a minute or two. Stir in the diced potato and sliced carrot. Reduce heat and cover the pan. Let the vegetables cook for 10 minutes or so until a little softened. Next, add in the thyme leaves, chives, caraway seeds and the rest of the garlic. Stir in the chicken and pour over the chicken stock. Bring to the boil. Reduce heat and leave to simmer for 1 hour.
3. Stir in half of the parsley. Taste and add salt and pepper to taste. Roughly blend with a stick blender until it is nicely creamy looking. Remove from the heat and let cool for 10 minutes.

4. Serve with some additions

   Stir in a good splash of cream, or milk for a lower fat option. Taste and adjust seasoning as necessary. Serve with some grated cheese and chopped parsley.

Enjoy!