A about a week ago we hosted a small dinner party and roasted a chicken using a rub given to us for Christmas. I won't go into the details of the roast chicken, but the rub was very spicy and full of intense flavors. As is usually the case, we made stock with the leftover carcass. The stock retained much of the spiciness of the chicken, and we ended up with several containers of stock in our refrigerator.
On Saturday, we made a spicy chicken soup. Our good friends recently had a baby boy and we wanted to prepare a meal that would nourish them and taste good.
So, here's my recipe for spicy homemade chicken soup:
6-8 cups of homemade spicy chicken stock (or any chicken stock)
2 carrots
1 celery stalk
2-3 small to medium shallots, coarsely chopped
4-6 chicken thighs, washed and dried, cut into bite-sized pieces
2 small cerano peppers, chopped
1 large bunch of Italian parsley, chopped
1 large bunch of cilantro, chopped
1 1/2 cup pasta shells
pinches of freshly ground sea salt and freshly ground pepper
3 tablespoons olive oil
Lightly salt and pepper the chicken thighs
Add oil to a cast iron Dutch oven, medium heat. In a separate pot, heat the chicken broth over high heat, reduce when the broth comes to a boil and let simmer.
Add the shallots, carrots, peppers and celery to the Dutch oven, and saute for 5-10 minutes until shallots become translucent and carrots begin to brown. Stir from time to time, adding salt and pepper as necessary.
Slightly increase the heat to medium high and add the chicken. Mix the chicken with the vegetables and let brown for another 5-10 minutes, covered. Be sure to stir the chicken to make sure it cooks thoroughly.
Add the parsley and cilantro and mix both with the chicken and vegetables. Reduce heat to medium again, cover and let cook for another 5-10 minutes stirring occasionally.
Meanwhile, cook pasta in a separate pot.
Once the chicken is cooked, add the broth and poasta to the Dutch oven, and stir chicken and vegetables into the broth. Cover and let simmer until ready to serve.
Our soup was deliciously spicy and wonderfully rich from the stock and from the accumulated flavors on the cast iron skillet. The soup also looked very green because of all the parsley and cilantro we put into the soup.
One comment about the chicken thighs: I've become a big fan of using thighs instead of chicken breasts. The main reason is that the flavor of the thighs is much better then breasts and thighs retain their moistness much better than breasts. Thighs are also more tender, and I think it's easier to judge when they're fully cooked.
Here's a salad we made to go along with the soup:
The next night, we had two remaining chicken thighs and we decided to saute them and cook them in some leftover marinara sauce.
We made this up as we went along, but basically we sauteed the chicken very much like we did the night before by sauteing some pressed garlic with two small bay leaves in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat, along with some halved pearl onions. Once the garlic and onions were heated up, we added the salted and lightly peppered chicken thighs and sauteed them until browned on both sides. Once browned, we added about a cup and a half of the marinara sauce, along with two whole tomatoes (they were leftover as well and we wanted to use them) and roasted the chicken in the oven at 400 degrees for about 15-20 minutes.
The tomatoes were soft and the chicken was thoroughly infused with the marinara sauce. And, best of all, the pearl onions were soft, moist and translucent. I made some risotto in our rice cooker (I know it's cheating, but with lots of chicken stock, some wine, salt, pepper and some golden raisins, it actually turned out pretty much like traditional risotto...I was shocked). It was a great meal.
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