Almost Free Chicken Soup

Ok. An easy one today. It's a bit of a "left-overs" meal, good for when you've had roast chicken or something like that or, as in my case, you've jointed a chicken and you're left with the carcass. Even if you haven't cooked chicken, you can usually pick up a carcass from the butcher for next to nothing.

Why do you need a chicken carcass? To make your own stock! Forget knorr etc. Full of chemicals. Yuck! What we want is real tasty stock from a real chicken and vegetables! We also want to get rid of those odd vegetables in the fridge that are "on the turn", if you know what I mean...

From this carcass, you can get two meals: chicken soup as I'm showing you today and later on we'll be making a risotto from the chicken stock.

Let's do the soup now.

Cost per person: 1 zl (20p UK, 24 Euro cents, 0.63 Turkish Lira)
Serves: 2

What you need for the stock:

- chicken carcass
- some old vegetables

What you need for the soup:

- an onion
- a clove of garlic (crushed)
- 1 dried red chilli
- 1 tomato
- 1 tsp allspice
- 1 tsp marjoram
- 3 bay leaves
- other herbs if you like
- salt and pepper to taste
- pieces of edible chicken salvaged from the carcass

What do we need to do?

1. Make the initial stock. Get the carcass in a big pan of water. Boil. Throw in some vegetables which are past their peak (but not rotten!). I used some bits of onion, old ginger, old garlic, one old green chilli pepper, 2 old tomatoes, a bunch of old parsley. You could use whatever's there.

2. Boil for around 2 hours.

3. Cool.

4. Strain the liquid into a container. Put in the fridge. You'll need this for in a couple of days time when I show you the risotto recipe. Yum!

5. Pick usable chicken from the carcass and put in a separate container. You'll need about half for the soup and half for the risotto.

6. Put the carcass and the veg from the stock back into the pan and add more water.

7. Bring to a boil and add the extra vegetables. I didn't add extra tomato because there was already a fair amount in the stock, but add some now if you didn't add any before.

8. Simmer for around an hour.

9. Strain the liquid out. Discard the carcass and veg. Add half the salvaged chicken pieces and hey presto! You've got your soup!

What did this cost?

- chicken: nothing at all - it was left over from a previous meal
- veg for the stock: nothing at all - I was going to throw them out the next day anyway
- veg and spices for the soup: about 0.20 zl let's say (and I'm being generous there)
- bread with the soup: 1.80 zl (again, that's generous)

Total cost: 2 zl
Serves: 2
Per person: 1 zl