So a couple days ago at ONK we roasted a chicken. It was delicious and juicy. There are only the two of us here, so we usually cannot finish a five pound chicken in a couple of days. So after two days of roast chicken some change would be nice, but we do not like to waste nearly two pounds of chicken. So today I will make chicken noodle soup, and while I’m at it I’ll give you some other ideas of how to use that extra chicken.

First of all, for any re-purposing you need to remove the remaining meat. I always like to use my skin and carcass to make stock so I never take the meat from the wings, back, or neck. Also leave the skin, using it in your stock, it will make it much richer and skin never cooks well the second time through. We usually cut the meat into small pieces, but feel free to shred it with a fork. You want it to be bite sized because that will reduce the chance it will dry out when you heat it (smaller pieces heat faster).

Now of course you can use your chicken on a salad or make chicken salad with it but what fun would that be? You can easily re-purpose your leftover chicken for gyros, tacos, mac and cheese, chicken pot pie, or sandwiches. Coat it in a sauce or some spice rub and heat it up and your chicken has new life. Today, I’m going to re-purpose my leftovers into chicken soup. Scientist’s mama hasn’t felt the greatest this week so we are going to take some soup to her. And as we all know nothing makes you feel better when you are sick as some homemade chicken soup.

The base of my soup is homemade stock. You need a stock pot or some other large pot. The carcass from a five pound roaster will make about four quarts of stock. Deliciousness awaits, so let’s get to it.

Stock:

• Carcass and skin of roaster chicken, picked clean of meat
• 2 large carrots
• 1 large onion cut into quarters
• 5 cloves garlic
• 2 Tbsp dried Parsley
• 1 Tbsp sea salt (you don’t need a lot of salt because your chicken skin is well seasoned so the stock will pick up some salt from the chicken)
• 4 1/2 quarts of water (the extra half-cup will cook off while you simmer your stock)

Place all the ingredients in a large pot. Simmer over medium heat for two hours uncovered. If you feel the volume of your stock is going down too much add some more water as it cooks. Remove the carcass and veggies with tongs. The less volume you end up with the thicker and richer it will be.

After your stock is ready you are ready to make soup. This recipe is another great one to sneak some veggies into if you have a picky eater in your house. The chicken stock will add a lot of flavor to any veggie.

Chicken Soup with Spaetzle:

• 4 qts chicken stock
• Roast chicken meat
• 4 carrots chopped
• 4 stalks celery chopped
• 1 onion chopped
• 1 lb dried spaetzle

Add your chicken meat and chopped vegetables to the pot of chicken stock. Simmer for ten minutes and add your spaetzle. Cook until the spaetzle is soft, at which point your soup is ready to eat.

Chicken soup does freeze well so even if you aren’t going to eat it right away freeze it in individual servings in freezer bags. When you want to have your soup take a bag out of the freezer and put it in a pot of boiling water until it heats through.