The best soup to me is a basic chicken soup where you cook the entire (small) chicken in a giant stock pot. Fill with water to cover the chicken plus about 2 inches. Add S&P, a bit of garlic, some fresh sage, big pieces of celery, carrot, and onion (big, so they're easy to discard later). Cook on medium till the meat is really tender and falling off the bones. Strain and save the stock, pull all the meat, and set aside. Re-heat the stock and re-season. Add sliced carrot, chopped celery, and sliced onion. (big, hearty pieces!) Cover and simmer for 40-60 minutes. Re-add the chicken ad bring back to a simmer. Taste and re-season. Add either pasta, egg noodles, or rice (whichever you prefer) and cook till done.
Can't get much better than that.
That's almost exactly what I made last night for the first time
ever, with the exception of adding more carrot, celery and onion
after pulling the chicken. Also, I had minced the carrot and
celery and left them in, adding body to the soup. I used an en-
tire head of garlic, unpeeled, and removed them after pulling the
chicken. They were squeezed out and mashed into a paste which was
added back in with about 10 fresh peeled cloves of garlic that were
browned in four Tbsp of butter. Also, I had studded the onion with
two cloves (Cloves cloves, not garlic cloves). We put this over rice
we had prepared in the microwave but cooking the rice / pasta in
the broth itself sounds delicious.
How would one go about making this soup spicy? I added habanero
flakes afterwords but I'm going to make this dish again today as
we ate well over half of it last night and want to add heat while
cooking.
Should I add diced chilies with the other veggies? Whole dried
chilies half-way through the cooking process?
