Nothing like a bowl of soup on a cold winter day…use up that leftover turkey!

6 to 8 cups of chicken or turkey stock
1 to ½ cups of chicken or turkey
3 stalks of celery including leaves
1 medium onion or 5 green onions
¾ cup chopped carrots

2 tsp thyme
½ tsp sage
pinch of tarragon

Boil the vegetables in the stock until tender. Add herbs and turkey when the vegetables are almost done and let sit for at least 15 minutes. Add rice to individual portions when serving. If you add rice to the whole thing and then have leftovers, the rice soaks up the broth. You can substitute noodles for the rice.

Serve with toasted garlic bread.

Chicken or Turkey Stock:

I make chicken stock from scratch from a leftover rotisserie chicken, turkey, or I cook about 6 chicken thighs in the toaster oven and then simmer the meat and bones to make a broth.

Either way, you need bones to make a good broth.

If I am baking chicken thighs, I marinate 6 to 8 chicken thighs first in:

2 tablespoons honey
3 tabelspoons olive oil
5 tablespoons soy sauce

I then put them in a deep roasting pan in my toaster over (with the marinade). I bake at 350 degrees until the chicken is crisp, about one hour.

After the chicken has cooled, I remove enough of the chicken for a meal. I boil the rest of the chicken in about 6 cups of water (enough to cover the chicken) with 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2tsp thyme, and two or three large celery stalks. Simmer, covered, for about two hours until the meat falls off. If you’re using a baked or rotisserie chicken or turkey, the method is the same: Simmer in water and other spices for two or three hours. Cool, run everything through a strainer to remove all bones.

Once the broth is cool, refrigerate. You can remove the fat from the top of the broth when it is set. The broth can also be frozen for use later.

1 slice of bacon finely chopped
3 to 4 cups of diced red potatoes
2 large stalks of chopped celery, including leaves (about 1 cup)
½ of a medium sized onion

2 cans of 6.5 oz minced clams
1 fourteen oz can of chicken broth (a good substitute is to use bottled clam juice if you can find it!)

1 cup of half and half

cream together 3 tablespoons of flour with 3 tablespoons of margarine

Cook chopped bacon until crispy. Remove bacon from pan and add potatoes, celery and onion. Stir fry for one or two minutes. Add chicken broth and clam broth from the clams. Make sure the vegetables are covered in liquid. Boil uncovered until the potatoes are tender (about twenty minutes.) Add the bacon, both cans of clams, and the half and half. Drop one tablespoon at a time of the flour/margarine mixture, stirring each tablespoon until completely dissolved. When the mixture has thickened, serve with crackers of choice!

Egg drop soup depends heavily on the taste of the broth so if you make your own broth from bones (chicken, pork or a combo), your soup will have more flavor. This Chicken and Rice recipe includes a recipe for making your own broth.

If you are using canned broth, I highly recommend that you enhance the flavor by steeping such items as: ½ cup of cabbage, dried porcini or shitake mushrooms.

To make the soup, pour two cans of chicken broth (approximately 30 oz of broth) in a saucepan:

Add:

4 or 5 minced baby carrots
½ cup minced onion
1/3 – ½ cup minced celery with leaves
¼ – ½ cup cooked sage sausage
3 or 4 diced white mushrooms
(½ cup cabbage/two dried porcini or shitake mushrooms for flavoring)

When the vegetables are tender, remove the cabbage, porcini and/or shitake mushrooms.
Mix 2 tablespoons cornstarch with 2 tablespoons cold water and add to broth while stirring.

Scramble one egg in a bowl. Pour about half the egg into the chicken broth in a thin stream back and forth across the broth. Wait a few seconds until the egg begins to float to the top. Stir. Add remaining egg in a thin stream. Wait and then stir. Add about a tsp of sesame oil to the soup and stir well.

Kernel corn is another common addition to this soup. To make it meatless, omit the sausage, use vegetable broth and add a pinch of sage.

Okay, this recipe really doesn’t go with any of the others, but it took me years to find out how to make this. It’s a simple soup and it isn’t difficult to make, but the ingredients can be difficult to find. Your best bet is an Asian store or a store that at least has a specialized Asian section.

Soak dried seaweed in cold water for 5 or 6 minutes to let it expand. There are different brands of wakame: Emerald Cove Silver Grade Ready-to-Use Pacific Wakame (Dried Seaweed), 35-Ounce Bag, which is a precut type of seaweed and goes well in the soup. If the package says to soak longer, it may be an indication of a thicker seaweed, which may stand out too much. All seaweed seems to expand about 20 times its dried size. Start to soak a few pieces and let it grow and see if you need more. You probably only need about 6 pieces of the pre-cut stuff. After you soak it, the stuff is slippery and hard to handle, but it can be cut into small pieces.

1 tsp bonito-style seasoning — this is like bouillon cubes only it is fish flavored pellets and is called Ajinomoto – Hon Dashi (Soup Stock) 5.28 Oz. I tried chicken stock, and it didn’t work very well—way too salty because the miso has a lot of salt.

4 cups water

Firm tofu diced into pieces

One green onion chopped

Two or three chopped mushrooms

~ 4 tablespoons of white miso

Heat the water and bonito pellets to boiling. (After you try this recipe, you may want to increase the bonito flavor a tad, but start here; those pellets are strong and if you overdo it, you won’t want to eat the result!) Add the onions, tofu and seaweed. Dissolve one tablespoon of miso at a time into the soup. I tried 3 tablespoons first; you might want to taste it after three and see if it is strong enough for you. Make sure you get white miso (which really looks light brown) and not the red miso. Red miso is also for making miso soup, but it is not likely the variety you’ve had in a restaurant in the U.S. It is typically served in the wintertime in Japan and is not common here.

After the miso is dissolved, the soup is ready! Bring on the sushi! And yes, I make sushi, but I can only advise you to take a sushi class because the process is lengthy and quite cumbersome.

Summertime isn’t my favorite time for soup, but when you have tomatoes…you gotta use’m up! My neighbor actually made this little soup and brought some over. I’ve changed it here and there, but it’s a good summer soup with lots of veggies (you can put almost anything in here.)

2 cans chicken stock (4 cups)
2 cans water (4 cups)

Bring to almost a boil. Dip 5 to 7 tomatoes into the stock for about 5 minutes so that you can peel them. I do this using the soup stock so that the flavor and whatnot from the skins goes straight into the soup. When the tomato skins split, remove them from the stock using prongs. Set them in a bowl to cool.

Add three celery stocks (these do not have to be cut as you will remove them after cooking.) to the broth and simmer.

Dice two small zucchini and add to the broth, continuing to simmer.
Add 1 tsp thyme
Add 1/2 to 1 tsp finely diced fresh rosemary (This is a strong flavor so you might want to start with 1/2 tsp and go up from there if you like it.)

When the tomatoes are cooled, dice them carefully, saving as much juice for the stock as possible. Add the diced tomatoes to the stock.

Add 1 tablespoon sugar.

Optional: Dice in some cooked sausage. I used Wisconsin beef sausage (sliced about an ounce, grilled it, and then diced it.)

Simmer, covered for about an hour.

You can add meatballs, cooked beans (white northern, pinto or red) and other vegetables (onions, garlic, parsley). After the soup has simmered, remove the celery stalks and discard.

Prepare two cups of dried pasta by following the directions on the bag. Little shells, small elbow pasta or any small noodle will do.

Add the noodles right before eating.

It’s a simple soup, but a very nice tomato based soup. It is quite good, even on a hot summer day!!