A chicken in every pot - Asta's Soup

As you may have noticed, we lost our little pal of nearly 20 years, our Jack Russell Terrier, Asta, today. Chicken soup seemed to be required for dinner. Something to soothe both body and soul - if there can be anything to really ease the loss of a beloved pet. When it’s a spunky and irrasible Jack Russell Terrier, well … it’s even harder.

I dedicate this awesome chicken and whole grain soup to Asta.

 

I’m putting the new Cuisinart electronic pressure cooker through its paces still. Wow. It’s simply wonderful. As you might have seen, the day before yesterday I cooked some wheat berries and brown rice - simply in water with some of the Herbamare salt alternative seasoning. Yum. That went into the fridge awaiting a homemade chicken broth.

It’s soooo easy. You take four chicken backs - $2.77 from Whole Foods - celery ribs (about 4, chopped up big), a big handful of baby carrots (about 6 to 8, saving the rest for the actual soup), 3 to 4 Bay Leaves, a small onion cut up roughly, a turnip out of the fridge - chopped, 4 or 5 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped, a few sprigs of fresh thyme, sage and rosemary. A healthy cupfull or a bit more of white wine and then about 8 cups of cold water. I put in a heaping teaspoon of Herbamare and a large pinch or two of ground pepper.

Set on High Pressure for 45 minutes. Walk away and do other stuff. Come back and release the pressure, then separate all the solids from the liquid. Strain the liquid to remove the last bits.

I have one of those gadgets that separate stock from fat, so I ran the chicken stock through that twice to remove as much of the much beloved ‘schmaltz’ as possible. Sorry, Suggie, but my arteries love me for it.

Then I picked the chicken backs clean of meat, discarding the fat, skin and bones. Sigh, no little white ‘Asta disasta’ to feed the juicy bits too. I reserved the chicken in another bowl.

Discard all the solids that went into making the stock.

Get the rest of your baby carrots, celery, garlic, onions, shallots, turnips, potatos … whatever you’ve got handy in that veggie drawer. Oh, and another couple Bay Leaves. I keep a bag of whole Bay Leaves in the freezer, since I use A LOT of them.  Put all that into the pressure cooker, add the stock only. Process on High Pressure for 10 minutes. Release pressure. Open.

Add the chicken meat, and then I added about 2 cups each of the cooked wheat berries and brown rice. You might want to add a bit of extra wine here. Depends on how much you’ve been drinking.

Put pressure cooker on High Pressure setting, put the lid back on and lock into place. Set the timer for 10 minutes. When done, release pressure and voila! Serve.

 

Mr. Maven had three huge bowls full. Yup. He liked it that much.

Knowing how Ms. Asta loved sweet carrots -right out the garden when she was a mere pup -  I think she would’ve like it too.

This soup is very economical - probably costing less than $6.00 with the meat, whole grains and veggies. It’s incredibly healthy - with me controlling the amount of sodium. And it will feed us for one dinner and a couple of lunches.

-maven