Chicken Soup for the Wallet

The title is a nod in the direction of Canfield and Hansen, but the style is different.

You can’t beat leftovers in my opinion.  Re-heating food adds an extra something to the fresh-cooked experience and although food doesn’t all react well to repeat cookings, my life would be emptier without it.

For example.

Take a small, pre-used chicken carcase and strip off all the meat.  In doing this, there is no substitute for a clean pair of hands since getting the delicious little mouthfuls from those two hollows in the lower back and the recessed parts of the keel requires a deft thumb.   

Put the good meat (chunks and strips) into a bowl for, say, a pasta sauce or a decent sandwich.  Drop the scratty bits and scrapings into another bowl.  Boil carcase in three pints of water to which a good quality vegetable stock cube is added.  “Good quality” can be determined from the ingredients list.  Only go for those containing food items, not the products of laboratories. 

Three hours later, strain bones and other debris from the stock.  Pick over the bits for extra shreds of meat that have dropped off and add to the pickens bowl.  Discard the bones, cartilage, skin, etc. unless you have access to a wormery.

Let the stock cool and, if desired, skim off excess fat.   

Add leftover roast potatoes and parsnips and a quarter of a chopped cabbage.  Include the hard bits from the cabbage core, since these cook down nicely. 

Macerate using a hand blender or liquidiser, but don’t make it too smooth.  Add half a pint of leftover white sauce.  Season.  Simmer for ten minutes.

Add two handfuls of sweetcorn and the chicken pickens.  Simmer for ten minutes.  Check seasoning.  (It will need more salt.  Everything always does)

Serve with Swiss Fitness Loaf, fresh from the bread maker courtesy of a Betty’s

recipe.

I got nine servings of delicious soup from a recipe including only two bought items: a stock cube and a few leaves and core of cabbage, since leftovers don’t count for budgetary purposes.  

Cost for nine portions = ninety pence.

Cost per person = ten pence.

Okay, I’ll add a quid for the bread ingredients making dinner per person a shade over twenty pence.  All the necessary food groups are present including (possibly, if you use enough veg.) three of the
five-a-day insisted on by the Food Fascisti.

Beat that, ye frugal cooks out there. 

Comment from Star Teacher: "Too much salt.  Must try harder."