Cooking & Baking

When I recently made Chicken of Muchness and got ten servings to freeze, I used two good-sized chicken leg quarters. If you did only one, and ramped down the other ingredients it might possibly work for you.

Again, carrots, onion, cinnamon stick, bay leaf, chicken broth (I use the cubes), tarragon, celery seed, marjoram, and thyme. Also a can of either diced tomato or crushed tomato. To make the small amount you want to make, you can only use one can. The larger amount I make I typically have one of each. I'd suggest going with the crushed tomato.

Boil the chicken. You really ought to skim off the crud that comes up in the first fifteen or so minutes of the boiling. Once that's done, put in cinammon stick (one or perhaps two for the small amount) and a bay leaf or two as well as a couple or three carrots. I LOVE carrots, so my version is heavy on carrots. Let simmer for an hour or two. Take out the chicken to cool. I break it apart a bit here to speed up the cooling down. Chop some onion. Sometimes I sautee the onion, sometimes not. Go with what you like. Cut up the carrots. Open the can of whatever tomatoes, and dump them in the pot. Take the chicken off the bone. This is the least fun part. You'll get your fingers all yucky, but you have to do this by hand so you only get chicken mean and not any of the other gross stuff into the soup.

Now I make a roux (butter, flour, cooked for a couple or three minutes) then add another cup (perhaps for the smaller amount you want to make, a half cup) of chicken broth. Let it thicken. Then pour into the soup pot that already has everything else, including the other herbs. A bit of pepper, if you'd like. The chicken broth cubes are already somewhat salty, so I don't add salt at this point.

I used to always fix rice to make this a chicken and rice soup, but lately I've dispensed with the rice. I suppose you could consider noodles, but I doubt I would.

The important thing about the flavor is that the cinnamon is by far the strongest flavor. This makes it completely different from any other kind of chicken soup out there. I actually adapted this recipe over several decades from an original Middle Eastern recipe I long since no longer have the original of.

Let me know if you make this. It's one of my personal favorite foods. Making a batch is somewhat time consuming, but since I have good freezer space, it's worthwhile.

Poindexter.