Chicken Soup A great New Years Choice

Here we are it's a new year and our thoughts turn to taking off the extra few pounds we may have put on during Thanksgiving and Christmas. My wife and myself just moved to Georgia are still waiting to get into our new house and my entire kitchen is in storage. Eating out is definitely a poor choice in any weight loss program, so what can one do to shed unwanted weight while still eating healthy? I was doing some research on the subject and discovered that people who add soup to their diet tend to eat less and thereby lose weight. Soups are nutritious, fill you up and are a great place to add the vegetables we sometimes have a hard time to put in our diet. What type of soup? Let us stay away from those that add a lot of cream to cut down on the amount of calories and to control the sodium, lets build our own broth. Too hard you say! Lets make it easy and start with a rotisserie chicken bought from our favorite supermarket which means we will not get a lot of that nasty scum on the top when we use uncooked meat. Once we make the broth we can make a large batch to last a couple of meals or split it to make a different soup later. This is my basic chicken soup recipe. Please enjoy, I know you can put your own spin on things and come up with your own version. I can't wait to get in to my new kitchen.

Ingredients

 1 rotisserie chicken

 4 carrots

 4 stalks celery

 2 large sweet onions

 1 bay leaf

 1 tsp. dry thyme or 3 sprigs

 2 to 3 cloves garlic

 3/4 cup pearl barley (you can sub white or brown rice)

 salt and pepper to taste

 garnish - fresh thyme, parsley, green onions, chives, or nothing (its up to you)

Procedure

 Separate the meat of the chicken from the bones. Fill a soup pot with 2 quarts of water and add the wing tips, carcass and any bones from the chicken. Bring to pot to a light boil and reduce to a simmer. Peel 2 of the carrots, the garlic cloves, 1 onion and clean the celery. Roughly chop into large pieces and add to the pot with the bay leaf and the thyme. Simmer for 2 to 3 hours. I like to extract all of the flavor out of the chicken and veggies so I pick a little remaining meat off the bones and taste it. It will taste bland when all the flavor has been transferred to the broth. Strain the broth and discard the bones and veggies. If you want an Oriental broth feel free to add more garlic and some slices of ginger. Remember to taste the broth and season accordingly.


 Peel clean and dice the remaining vegetables to the same size and add to the stock. Dice one or 2 of the chicken breast and add to the pot. The amount of chicken and veggies are up to you. Feel free to vary according to you own preferences. You may want to add other veggies. Add the barley and simmer until the barley is done. Add any garnish and serve hot.

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