Comforting Chicken Soup
By: Fran
Published: Sunday, March 21, 2010 - 8:50pm

Ingredients




1 plump chicken whole or cut into pieces
1 large onion, sliced (thickly)
3 inches carrots, sliced into 1  pieces
2 tablespoons chopped, fresh dill
Salt

Demi Glace Poulet

Preparation

1 Drop the chicken into a very large stock pot (at least 7 quarts) and cover with water.  To make things easy later, cut up your chicken and add it in pieces, being sure to include the heart, liver, kidneys and neck (if the parts were included with your bird).  Add the carrots and onions, reserving the dill for the very end.  At this point I add salt.  How much?  I knew you were going to ask that!  I tend to be a little light-handed on salt, but you can go with as much or as little as you want, just keep in mind that you won’t be tasting this soup until it’s had time to cook.  You can always add salt before serving and while I only added a little more than a tablespoon of demi glace, it does add a fair amount of salt. 2 Cook the soup over medium high.  Once it begins to boil, reduce the heat and simmer.  At about 30 – 45 minutes you can remove the white meat, (check the temperature of the meat) which I recommend.  Cooking the soup for 2 – 3 hours causes the white meat to dry out.  DRY OUT in a pot of boiling soup, you say?!  Yes, really.  It gets dry and stringy.  But, if you want to use the breast meat for Chicken Enchiladas or other Pulled Chicken uses, just keep it in there. 3 Continue cooking the soup for hours.  I usually stop at three.  The longer you cook the soup, the more flavorful it becomes.  My soup is dark because of the demi glace, but you know it’s been cooking for a long time because of it’s gelatinous texture which comes from the skin, connective tissue and bones of the chicken.  Come on, isn’t that what gelatin is made from and gelatin is what makes those colorful boxes of Jell-O people!  Don’t freak out on me. 4 Strain the soup, reserving the meat as you wish. 5 If you have time, refrigerate the soup overnight and skim off the fat with a big slotted spoon before serving.  Be sure to keep the fat!  Like duck fat, it's a delicacy and can be spread on Matzo or used in Matzo balls, the best addition to this soup.