Poor Man’s Penicillin

Whenever you are sick the ultimate answer is soup, someone will always say they will make some soup as if it can cure all.  I was brought up on Chicken Soup which was considered to be poor man’s penicillin.  I will give you two recipes my Dad’s original recipe and my tweaked version.

Dad’s Original Recipe

The amounts for the ingredients can vary dependent upon size of saucepan you are using, in theory if you can fit a small chicken in it with room to spare for vegetables then I would use a whole chicken however myself I tend to use chicken thighs my largest saucepan is not that big.

• Whole Chicken or 3-4 thighs (with skin on) or legs
• 3 Large potatoes (peeled and chopped medium sized) an alternative to potatoes you can use Turnips which is a sweet flavour
• 3-4 sticks of celery (chopped)
• 1 Sweet Onion (chopped, if you cannot get a sweet one you can use a normal large onion and a large banana shallot)
• 1 Leek (chopped)
• Chicken Stock (enough to cover all the ingredients)
• Ideally you need Chicken Fat if you can get it normally very difficult to get these days but you can do without it.
• 2 Carrots (chopped)
• Salt/Pepper

Layering the Saucepan

• Place the potatoes in the bottom of the saucepan followed by the celery then put the chicken on top.
• Sprinkle Salt & Pepper on top.
• Put Chopped leek on top
• Put Chopped Carrots on top
• Pour hot chicken stock/fat over the ingredients until covered.

Cooking

• Place on a high heat until it is boiling and then turned down to simmer and cover with lid.
• Check every 15 minutes and stir.
• The liquid will eventually go clearish and the smell will be amazing
• Taste after 45 minutes, check that the chicken is done.
• If you are cooking a whole chicken it may take as long as 90 minutes

Serving

You can serve the soup separately to the Chicken it is entirely up to you.

My Tweaks – Ingredient Changes

• Instead of potatoes I use one large sweet potato peeled and chopped (upon reheating tends to turn into a thick broth)
• Sea salt
• Celery seeds
• No chicken fat

I eat the chicken (thighs) with the soup normally takes about an hour to prepare and cook which is a quick and easy meal plus I always have leftovers I can reheat.