Farm Box Soup

In our home, where you have a meal with roast chicken one day, you will also have soup with homemade chicken stock another day.  I like to purchase organic chickens and they are definitely more expensive than their non-organic counterparts.  Sadly, you won’t see a “99 cents a pound sale” on whole organic chickens. But, when I use one chicken for two or more meals, suddenly, they become very cost-effective.

Enter “Farm Box Soup”.  On the eve of eating a roast chicken I have made it a habit to make chicken stock. Since this week, I only roasted a half chicken, I had limited parts for the broth, but I made what I could.  Thankfully, I had 4 pints of chicken stock in the freezer from the last time I made broth.  So, after making this weeks batch, I added my frozen broth to the mix.

You may be wondering why I called this soup “Farm Box Soup.” Or, maybe you have already guessed, but, that is because the soup will take on many forms each week, depending on what is in the box. Keep it adventurous! That’s what I say. 🙂

After cooling the broth, I then strained the broth to remove the veggies and bones. Once it was cooled and strained, I added the veggies.

This time I used about 1 cup of carrots sliced, 1 cup of kohlrabi in small cubes, 3 medium potatoes cubed in medium chunks, 1/2 of a large onion chopped, and 1 can of pinto beans for added protein since I wasn’t adding any chicken. I cut the veggies larger when they cook more quickly (like potatoes) than the others so they all finishing cooking at the same time. To season the soup, I added 1 tablespoon of poultry seasoning, a few dashes of hot sauce, salt and pepper to taste and about 2 tablespoons of fresh parsley.

I then stored my soup in the refrigerator until I was ready to cook it. This helped me to be prepared, even though I was playing “taxi driver” from 1:30 – 5:30 pm. When I arrived home, I immediately put the soup on the stove. Once it boiled, I added 8 ounces of whole wheat pasta. The whole pot cooked an additional 15 minutes at a medium simmer. We put the soup in bowls and added fresh chopped parsley, and some Queso Fresco.

Though not shown in the picture, alongside the soup, I also served up a recipe of Grandma’s Buns. Yum!