Tag Archives: soup

Perpetual Chicken Stock

Its Thanksgiving week already can you believe it? This week’s recipe is for stock. I know I have mentioned it a lot recently and I just did this last week so I thought I would share. Last week a friend and I made chicken pot pie with chicken legs. We saved the bones and made perpetual chicken stock. I don’t know about you but it is so very satisfying to make a meal and not waste a thing! From a Chinese Medicine perspective bone broth is super nourishing for the Kidney/Urinary Bladder system of winter and its great for your digestion and absorption of everything else you eat. Here is an article from Weston Price touting all the delicious benefits of homemade chicken stock.  

 

What do you need:

crock pot

chicken bones (or other soup bones, make sure they are organic or straight from the farm)

mason jars

2 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

whatever other veggies you want for your stock I used the scrapes from our chicken pot pie (carrots, celery, brussel sprouts, onion, peppercorns, garlic etc) and some beet greens that were still in the garden.

water

Directions:

Put your chicken bones and veggies in your crock pot and pot with cold water and 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar (the ACV helps to draw the marrow and gelatin out of the bones where all the good stuff is). Cover and turn on high. After first round take out at least 2 cups of broth (I filled a mason jar) then replenish the same amount of broth you took with fresh water. Strain out veggies and just let bones remain. Cook on low for next batch. Again when it is finished take out at least 2 cups or another mason jar and replenish with equal amount of cold water. Cook on low again. You can continue this for up to 7 days. Now you have chicken stock for all your recipes. You can even freeze the stock in the mason jars! Just make sure to first cool the stock in the refrigerator before putting in the freezer and leave room at the top for the liquid to expand. If I can steal the turkey bones from thanksgiving dinner I will be doing this again. 🙂

 

Coconut Lime Butternut Squash Soup

If you haven’t noticed already I really enjoy soups. I used to be a terrible soup maker and then one day they started to all taste really good. Putting together a nice hardy soup is the perfect meal to have on hand for days you don’t feel like cooking or get home late or don’t feel like cooking. 🙂 This is another week of transitions with the time change, it won’t make you sleepy but it will fill your belly. This batch made several tasty meals.

I started with this recipe here. Below are my adaptations.

  • 1 medium butternut squash (spleen/stomach)
  • 2 tablespoons coconut oil (lung/large intestine)
  • 1 onion (lung/large intestine)
  • 1 large sweet potato, cut into cubes (spleen/stomach)
  • 2 teaspoon cumin
  • 1 teaspoon chile pepper, or 1 tablespoons fresh minced chile pepper
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 4 cups chicken stock (lung/large intestine)
  • 15 oz coconut milk (lung/large intestine)
  • Juice of 1 lime (liver/large intestine)
  • 2 cups spinach leaves (liver/large intestine)
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • rice (spleen/stomach)

1. Cut squash length wise and deseed. Cook at 375 until tender about 45 minutes.

2. In coconut oil cook onion until fragrant and translucent. Add sweet potatoes and cook until tender 5-10 minutes or so. Sprinkle 1/2 of cumin and cinnamon and cook. When squash is cooked, scoop out in chunks and add to sweet potatoes. Add the rest of the spices and chicken stock, bring to boil and then lower to simmer. Mix in coconut milk and let simmer for 15 minutes.

3. 5 minutes before serving add spinach and cooked rice.

Enjoy!

p.s. You can turn this into a creamy soup if you put in the blender but I recently broke my blender and we really enjoyed it this way. It felt more filling. If you are feeling adventurous add some raisins! 🙂

Minestrone Soup Recipe

I had lots of garden goodness to process so I made a big batch of soup. Its the perfect day for soup today isn’t it? Do you make your own broth? Its super easy to do. I was scared of it until I started reading all the benefits of “bone soup”. Last year we joined our first CSA for meat and eggs and it really opened my eyes on how we eat. Before then we almost never had any bones in our meat. I learned how super simple it is to get several meals out of one piece of meat when you use everything. (as a side note we all lost some weight and feel better 🙂

For this recipe I had recently cooked a whole chicken in the crock pot (I used the chicken for a coconut stir fry with lots of veggies and enchiladas verdes with homemade tomatillo sauce straight from the garden). I took the bones and the juices and kept them in the crock pot and added whatever I had on hand: garlic, celery, carrots, scraps of veggies etc and 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar (that helps extract the marrow out of the bones into the soup where all the good stuff is) and let it slow cook for 12 hours or so then strained everything out.

All veggies for this soup are a mix of my garden and the store. We started with leeks, garlic, eggplant, carrots, celery, peppers, zucchini, tomatoes, brocoli, and mushrooms.

leeks, garlic, mushrooms, white beans (lung/large intestine)

carrots, yellow and orange peppers, yellow tomatoes (spleen/stomach)

zucchini, celery, and brocoli (liver/gall bladder)

home-made broth (kidney/urinary bladder)

 

Start with a few pieces of nitrate free bacon. We got ours from farmer Nick. Cook that up with some leeks and garlic until brown then add the rest of your veggies. We like a hardy soup so I usually fill up 2 or 3 cereal bowls of cut veggies. Cook the veggies for a few minutes then add some tomato paste or homemade canned/stewed tomatoes and 6 cups or so of chicken broth. Add whatever seasoning you like or have on hand; I used thyme, oregano, parsley and some garlic salt. We also added in a cup of white kidney beans and a cup of dry brown rice pasta to make it a meal. Bring to a boil and let simmer for 30 minutes.  Enjoy!