Slow Cooker Chicken Stock and Leftover Chicken Soup

This is really 2 recipes. I’m a firm believer that you should always make stock out of a roast chicken carcass, and it’s really easy if you have a slow cooker. The soup recipe that accompanies this is intended to be pretty customisable to fit whatever you have in the house. This verson has a minestrone sort of feel to it. Serve topped with grated parmesan with ciabatta or French bread drizzled with some olive oil

Chicken Stock Ingredients

Carcass of 1 roast chicken
2 onions, peeled and halved
2 carrots, peeled and halved
2 celery sticks (optional)
2 bay leaves
2 tsp black peppercorns

Strip all remaining meat from the bones (you can use these little bits in your soup.)

Using a big knife or meat cleaver, break as many of the bones as you can. This can get a bit grisly.

Transfer the bones, vegetables and other flavourings into the slow cooker. Fill the slow cooker with boiling water and cook on LOW for 12-16 hours.

Strain the resultant mixture through the finest sieve you have (cloth is even better), and skim off any fat that rises to the surface.

That’s your stock good to go!

Leftover Chicken Soup Ingredients

1 diced onion
1 small diced leek
Half tsp dried thyme
Half tsp dried oregano
2 small diced carrots
2 crushed garlic cloves
1 red chilli, sliced into fine rings
Your chicken stock and the chicken you stripped off the carcass
2tsp tomato puree
60g small pasta like macaroni or bits of broken spaghetti
1 tin butter beans (or any beans)
handful shredded cabbage

Soften the onion, leek, herbs, chilli and carrots in a little oil for 10-15 minutes

Add the garlic, cook for a further couple of minutes before adding your stock and tomato puree.

Bring to a simmer and cook for another 5 or 10 minutes.

Add the pasta, and simmer for 5 minutes

Add your cabbage, beans and chicken and cook until the cabbage is cooked how you like it and everything else is heated through. Season to taste.