Curry Chicken Noodle Soup

Chicken noodle soup may sound like fare for those with a fever, nourishing perhaps, but not exciting flavor. Forget that. This recipe begins with a whole fryer, although you could use a rotisserie chicken from the grocery. There are two reasons why I prefer to begin with an uncooked chicken: first the price and second and more important, the wonderful flavor you get from the pan drippings after roasting the chicken.

Wash and pat dry the chicken and season with salt and pepper.

Then stuff the inside of the chicken with one lemon cut in half. Squeeze the juice from each half into the cavity of the bird then put the lemon halves in too. Cut one head of garlic (that's one head, not one clove) and put both halves into the bird. Last cut a medium sized onion into quarters and insert. Hopefully you will have room for all of the onion. Then tie the legs together with kitchen twine. Drizzle olive oil over the bird and season the outside with salt and pepper.

Place the stuffed chicken uncovered into  a roasting pan that is just a little larger than the chicken in a 400 degree preheated oven. The pan should have sides to catch all of the drippings that will emerge from the chicken.

Roast for an hour to an hour and a half depending on the size of the chicken, or until a meat thermometer reads 180 degrees when inserted near the thigh.

When the chicken is done, remove it and place it on a plate to cool so that you can remove the meat.

Pour the drippings from the pan into a cup. When they have cooled in the fridge you can remove the layer of fat and discard it. What is left can be used.

Take the pan with its browned bits and place it back on a burner on medium heat. Add white wine or some chicken stock to deglaze the pan. While heating the wine/stock scrape up the browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Once the pan has been scrapped clean you will have a brown liquid that can be reduced in volume by simmering for a few minutes. Then pour this into another small container and allow it to cool. Again remove the layer of fat that will rise and congeal at the top. This dark brown gelatin is packed with flavor and will be great for soups or gravy!

Remove the cooled chicken meat from the bones and set aside.

The cooked chicken will be added to the soup.

Now we make the chicken stock.
Discard the lemons and put the carcass and the remaining garlic and onions into a big stock pot with the following:

• another head of garlic cut in half
• 2 stalks of celery cut into quarters
• 3 carrots cut into quarters
• 10 whole black peppercorns
• a bunch of parsley tied with kitchen twine
• one onion cut into quarters, you don't even have to peel it

Now fill the stock pot with water to within 2 inches of the top and put it on the stove. Bring the contents to a boil and then turn down to simmer. Simmer until the liquid is reduced by half, 4 - 6 hours.

After the liquid has reduced by half and cooled, strain the liquid through a colander and discard the vegetables, they have given up all of their flavor by this point.

Then strain the liquid through a fine mesh strainer to get the finished stock.

Cool in the fridge and remove the fat that will rise to the top. This will yield about 3 quarts of stock.

Now you have delicious chicken and stock for the soup. I know this sounds like a lot of work, but the resulting flavor is well worth it. You could roast the chicken and make the stock one day and finish the soup the next day.

To make the soup prepare the following vegetables:

• 3 carrots medium dice
• 1 onion medium dice
• 2 stalks of celery medium dice

Saute the vegetables in 1 Tablespoon of butter and 1 Tablespoons of olive oil.

Season the vegetables with 1 teaspoon of salt (I use Kosher salt) and 1/2 teaspoon of ground black pepper. Since this is curry chicken noodle soup, add 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of curry powder ( I used Madras Curry Powder) to the vegetables as they are cooking.

When the vegetables are tender, add the chicken stock (6 cups) and some of that dark brown liquid (concentrated flavor, fat removed) that you saved from the reduced drippings when the chicken was roasted. Add the chicken that you have shredded into the size you like for the soup. I like shredding instead of chopping the large pieces of chicken. Let this simmer in a large pot for an hour. 

Add the noodles, I used Mrs. Miller's Old Fashioned Medium Egg Noodles, and stir into the soup. Adjust seasoning, adding salt if needed. Adding the noodles will take up some of the salt flavor. I serve it with slices of the curry wheat bread. See the post from September 24, 2013 for this recipe.

This will definitely warm you up on a cold evening!

Inspiration for this recipe comes from Ina Garten's recipes for roasted chicken. See her recipes on Foodnetwork.com