Wednesday 11 September 2013

Left over chicken? ... Make Soup!


I love this recipe so much, I was really looking for an excuse to have left over chicken to make it!
Its a really warm rustic soup thats great to have with a dollop of greek yoghurt and some crusty bread.

Its easy to make too. You may need a food processor if you want to thicken it up a bit, but it still works well as it is. Also make use of the chicken carcass left over and make your own stock if you have the time and ingredients to hand, it will taste all the more rustic. (I will do a little post on how to do this next)

Rustic Chicken Soup

serves 4-6

Preperation time 15mins
Cooking time 35 mins 


1 tbsp olive oil
2 onions, chopped
3 medium carrots, chopped
1 tbsp thyme
1.4 l chicken stock
200g leftover roast chicken, shredded and skin removed
200g frozen peas

3 tbsp Greek yogurt (optional)
1 garlic clove, crushed (optional)
squeeze lemon juice (optional)

1. Heat the oil in a large heavy-based saucepan Then add the chopped onions, carrots and thyme, then gently fry for 15 mins. 

3. Stir in chicken stock and bring to a boil, cover, then simmer for 10 mins.

4. Add the chicken, remove half the mixture, then blend in the food processor. 

5. Tip back into the pan with the rest of the soup, peas and seasoning, then simmer for 5 mins until hot through.

If you have the ingredients to hand then continue

5. Meanwhile mix the yogurt, garlic and lemon juice, swirl into the soup in bowls, then serve with some crusty bread!




Costings

So the chicken is obviously quite expensive on its own but because we are using it for 3 meals it really works out to be quite reasonable.
  • I bought a whole 1.4 kg chicken for £3.40 from LIDL. I found that amount of chicken to be just the right amount to split into 3 meals. That's £1.13 for the amount we need.
  • Onions from LIDL were 63p for a bag of 8 that works out around 8p each. That's 16p
  • Garlic was 25p per bulb and we used 1 cloves, that's about 2p
  • LIDL do a 1kg bag of carrots for 79p, 3 carrot works out at 24p
  • LIDL do frozen peas or a tin of peas will work too at 20p
  • Lemons where 8p each in LIDL
  • The Chicken Stock is 15p for 10 in Sainsburys that's 5p for 1.4L
  • I already had a big tub of Greek Yoghurt but its from TESCO at 50p for 200g
If you bought all the ingredients from scratch that would work out as £6.
The meal cost works out as £2.02 for 4-6 servings which works out between 50p to 34p per meal.


We are going to spice things up with Chicken Curry leftovers next!