I don’t know about you, but feeding a family of 6 is not cheap these days, so I like to stretch my meals as far as I can. One thing we love doing especially in the winter is making homemade soup from a leftover meal. As the weather starts to get a little cooler, there is nothing better than sipping a nice warm bowl of soup on a chilly day. The best part of making the soup, is that I usually already have all of the ingredients in the house and can turn last night’s leftovers into more than one meal.
One of our family favorites is a making a Lemon Herb and Beer flavored Chicken. I will admit, a few years ago, I didn’t have the slightest clue on how to cook a bird. But, once I started making changes for my family, I decided one of my goals was to learn how to make a whole chicken. I started out with a simple recipe on the internet on how to brine a chicken and then bake in the oven. It was so simple, I couldn’t believe it took me so many years before I tried this. We have also tried to purchase whole chickens that are organic with no preservatives or added GMO’s. The birds do tend to be a bit pricier, but its well worth it.
For those of you that work from home, this is such an easy meal to make on a weekday. You get the brine ready in the morning when you are making breakfast, clean the bird and put him in the brine in the frig and let it sit for a few hours. After lunchtime, I cut up the veggies (carrots, celery,onion, potatoes), toss them in with the chicken, flavor with olive oil or butter, add seasonings (thyme, fresh garlic, basil, oregano, salt, pepper) squeeze with some fresh lemon (add a bottle of beer) and bake in the oven. It’s usually somewhere between 2 – 3 hours to cook the bird, depending on how big it is.
This is a great meal that I love to make on days when I teach my son’s Religious Education class. I teach the class on Tuesdays at my house with nine 8 year old kids. Class starts at 4:15 and is over by 5:30, so there isn’t alot of time to cook a healthy meal before running one of the boys to their next activity. As soon as RE class is over, the bird is done and we can sit down as a family to eat.
Later that evening we end up with 3 different meals.
Meal 1 – Lemon Chicken with Veggies
Meal 2 – Homemade chicken soup
Meal 3 – Peanut Butter Chicken or Chicken Salad for lunch sandwhiches
Meal 2 – Chicken Soup – Take the some of the leftover bird (and its drippings) and let it simmer in a pot of water to get the juices and flavors from the bones. I add in some carrots, celery, onion, potatoes and chicken stock and let simmer for a few hours. Then I take out the bones, add noodles and I have dinner and/or a few lunches for the week. My husband even said he loved the soup better than him mom’s recipe. (Boy, that complement doesn’t happen often! But I will gladly accept it and keep on making one of his personal favorites.)
Meal 3 – Thai Peanut Butter Chicken – This is one of my personal favorites. For those of you who live in Chicago and have ever been to Siam Rice, this is the closet I can find to their Peanut Butter Chicken and Broccoli recipe. I use leftover chicken breast from the Chicken Meal and use it to create my 3rd meal of the week. Or sometimes I will take the leftover chicken breast and made a wide variety of chicked salads that can be used for lunches the rest of the week or another dinner. You can be as creative as you want and change it up each week.
Here is also a link to 3 other recipes of how to take a nice Sunday Supper into a Weekday Soup. I haven’t tried these recipes yet myself, but they seem fairly easy and worth a try. http://www.karenehman.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/SuppertoSoup.pdf
If you have any of you own favorite recipes on turning one meal into tasty soup, please feel free to share. Enjoy!