So, I started my new year with good intentions… While I’m not one to make resolutions, my intention was to start the new year off by making a delicious cleansing chicken and vegetable soup to eat for a few days.
You see, the husband and I own a dog grooming business, and we were blessed this year with a lot of delicious homemade treats from our clients. We were also given several restaurant gift cards. We always close shop for Christmas through New Year’s, and during that week we ate out every day in order to save money and use up those gift cards. It was so fun to go out as a family to places we don’t normally go, and order things we can’t normally afford!
After all of this food and fun, we were definitely ready to get back into our routine, and I was feeling pretty groggy from all of the junk we’d been eating. I got to work early in the day on New Year’s Eve making my soup. I turned on Pandora, and started chopping all of the vegetables, etc. When it came time to add the whole chicken, I just completely freaked! While I’m fairly new to cooking real food, I’ve made chicken stock before, and even roasted a whole chicken. But for most of my married life we’ve lived on chicken nuggets, and if I was going to make “healthy” chicken I would get a bag of frozen chicken breasts or tenderloins. It was a completely different experience to get a whole chicken, pull the gizzards, etc out of the “cavity” as they call it, and even worse to see the neck still attached to the body!!!!
I finally got over my little episode, put the chicken in the pot, put the lid on, and let it simmer all day long. It ended up being a delicious soup, probably one of the best homemade soups I’ve ever made. Definitely one of the healthiest!
As I reflected on this, I was reminded that chicken doesn’t come in a bag of parts from the freezer section at the grocery store…. A chicken is a live animal. A person raised that chicken, then processed it and sold it to my family to eat. I have dreams of homesteading, but as an animal lover, I would probably have to stick with keeping chickens for eggs as opposed to their meat!
A positive thing that resulted from my chicken soup incident was that it reinforced the importance of knowing where our food comes from. Completely random thought, but while we were watching “Napolean Dynamite” as a family, we came upon the scene of Napolean and Pedro working at the chicken farm. It brought up an opportunity to show the boys the difference between a large commercial farm vs. the small free range method. My sister helps out at a small farm, so we have the chance to take the boys there occasionally to see the chickens, turkeys, horses, etc.
Here’s the recipe if you want to try it at home!
Cleansing Chicken Soup (The Maker’s Diet for Weight Loss by Jordan Rubin)
- 1 whole or cut free range, pastured or organic chicken
- 3-4 quarts filtered water
- 1 Tbsp raw apple cider vinegar
- 4 med onions, coarsely chopped
- 8 carrots, peeled and coarsely chopped
- 6 celery stalks, coarsely chopped
- 2-4 zucchinis chopped
- 1 pound green beans
- 1/2 cup fresh or frozen green peas
- 4 inches grated ginger
- 4 Tbsp extra virgin coconut oil
- 1 bunch parsley
- 5 garlic cloves
- 2-4 Tbsp sea salt
- 1/4-1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
Remove fat glands and gizzards if you’re using a whole chicken. Place chicken in a large stainless steel pot with the water, vinegar,garlic, ginger, salt, cayenne pepper, extra-virgin coconut oil, and all veggies except parsley. Let stand for 10 minutes before heating. Bring to a boil, removing the scum that rises to the top. Cover and cook 8-12 hours. The longer it cooks, the more cleansing it will be. About 15 minutes before finishing, add parsley.
Remove from heat and take out the chicken. After it cools, remove the meat from the carcass, discarding the bones. Drop the meat back into the soup. You may puree for even easier digestion.
So, do you ever get grossed out when cooking meat?!
Discard the bones?! No way, save them to make mOre stock!
That was my reaction too! Keep the bones; if you don’t want to make stock right away, freeze them for later! See my “waste not” entries on the Mahlzeit blog for all the things you can do with your “waste.”
I will definitely look at that Xan!
but as an animal lover, I would probably have to stick with keeping chickens for eggs as opposed to their meat!
I’d like to politely challenge the implication in this statement that the loving animals and slaughtering them are in conflict. If you look at the factory food production system, you will see what comes from slaughtering animals without any love for them. They’re treated as commodities, with little accommodation for their “animal nature,” as Joel Salatin would put it. It’s horrible. Some people would say that loving animals is incompatible with eating them, and those people are welcome to be vegetarians. For you and I, who eat meat, we must accept that killing animals is an inherent part of that, but it shouldn’t mean that we don’t love them just as much as the animals that we don’t eat..
I’ve totally been there! I used to not eat meat with bones in it (frozen boneless, skinless chicken breasts and boneless steaks only). It reminded me too much of the fact that what I was eating used to be a live animal. Then I bought 1/2 a side of beef after I read Food Inc. and lots of those steaks and roasts came with bones. Yikes! I decided that it was time to face the fact that meat was once a live animal. I also buy whole chickens now direct from the farmer but so far I’ve only roasted them and made broth with the bones. I haven’t tried cutting one up. I’ve bought chickens that come with the gizzards and long neck and others with no organs and very short necks. I’ve been told (by the farmer I bought from last time) that the necks are sometimes left long so the bird weighs more and therefore costs more. I don’t buy my chickens from that place anymore.
I hadn’t thought about the necks that way, Maria! I always just use them for stock and consider them a valuable part of the animal.
Thank you Joshua for your first comment; I was just about to post the same thing! I dearly love animals and want to see them treated humanely; one reason I am raising my own now rather than participating in the industrialized food system where animals are routinely abused.
I agree with both of you Joshua and Annie… I wasn’t saying that you can’t be an animal lover and a meat eater… I was just implicating that at this point in my journey to eating real food I will have to buy meat from my local farmers (who lovingly raise and harvest the animals!) as opposed to trying to raise my own:)
Years ago I bought a large ham… something. I don’t remember what it was called but it was big enough it required I portion it and low-and-behold there was a joint in there (shoulder? hip?) that I had to… deconstruct and work around. It was a first for me but I managed through it and since then things like that don’t bother me so much.
When I want good, healthy soup, I roast a whole chicken (then rip it apart and freeze for later use). After the meat has been removed, everything goes into a pot with water and I boil that good stuff out for hours, then remove any solids and freeze in ice cube trays (then stored in bags in the freezer). I get a good *lot* of super yummy, super healthy stock that can be added to anything (or just heated and drunk). It’s insanely cleansing and clears up threatening colds like nobody’s business!
Great idea Kelly! Thanks!
It is fun to read your enthusiasm as you made your soup (and are going through the changes you are with food). I buy my chickens from a local farmer and I haven’t ever see the neck (or even part of it) still attached. That’s a new one for me. your soup sounded wonderful.
Thanks Emily, it’s entertaining if nothing else!
It’s very true that it’s a bit of a shift to come back to eating REAL food. I was with some kids once and when given fried chicken drumstick they had no idea what it was or how to eat it because they had always eaten chicken nuggets. So happy that your children will grow up knowing what a real chicken looks and tastes like.
I thought of this quote when I read your post:
Maybe most important, farm food itself is totally different from what most people now thing of as food: none of those colorful boxed and bagged products, precut, parboiled, ready to eat, and engineered to appeal to our basic desires. We were selling the opposite: naked, unprocessed food, two steps from the dirt.
Kristin Kimball from The Dirty Life: A Memoir of Farming, Food, and Love
Love that quote!!! I watched a show on food network (i think!) the other night where bobby flay & some other big name chefs were challenged to make a meal for 100 foodies in new york city out of discarded food. most of the food they found was perfectly good food, just not perfect looking, so “normal” people wouldn’t buy it in a grocery store. it was very thought provoking!
[...] quote came to mind when I was reading my friend DeeDee’s post over at Not Dabbling earlier this week. She’s just starting her journey away from processed food and was struggling with using a [...]