Two in the Morning Soup
List of Ingredients
Two in the Morning Soup
Okay. The reason doesn't matter. It is two in the morning, and you
can't sleep. Not the first time in your life; won't be the last.
This time, though, you have it wired. You just happen to have a pot
of soup in the refrigerator...
5-6 chicken thighs, skinned and excess fat trimmed
1 package smoked beef sausage, Andouille sausage,
or whatever, cut 3/16" thick
1/2 pound baby carrots, cut bite size
2 tablespoons oil (walnut oil is nice, but olive oil works too)
dash chili oil
2 sprigs rosemary
1 tablespoon sea salt
1 tablespoon coarse ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 cup dry white wine
1 Habanero (Scotch Bonnet) pepper, seeded and sliced
very fine
splash vermouth
rice, noodles, potatoes or any other starch of your choice
First, understand that we do not make this at two in the morning.
Insomnia or a troubled mind or whatever, two in the morning is not
time to attempt to function. Make this up at a more reasonable hour,
and just keep some in the fridge for contingencies. Worst case, you
grab a little for lunch until it is gone, and then you can make some
more. And, if you do the second (and third and fourth) batches from
memory, it will be just enough different in each instance to remain
interesting....
Anyway. Drag out your soup pot. I use an eight quart Calphalon that
I brought back on the plane with me from a trip to El Paso. Heat the
pan. Add the oil(s). Brown up the chicken. There are Communists out
there who will tell you that browning meat somehow generates
carcinogens. Disregard these bozos. What browning meat does is to
liberate all kinds of delicious caramelization products. Same applies
to veggies. So, brown up your chicken. In batches. Then, brown the
sausage rounds. In batches. Then, brown the carrots.
Add a couple of cups of water to the pan. Scrape all the good stuff
off the bottom. Return all the chicken, sausage and carrots to the
pan. Add the wine, salt, pepper and the Habanero pepper. Use
additional water, as required, to cover everything nicely. Simmer for
half an hour or so. Fish out the chicken. Put it in a bowl and put
the bowl in the freezer for about ten minutes. At this point, you can
pull all the meat off the bones without incurring a trip to the burn
clinic. Toss the chicken meat back into the pot and the bones into
the garbage. They have served their purpose in the great scheme of
things by now.
Simmer for a few more minutes, then turn off the heat and allow to
cool for an hour or so. Transfer to the refrigerator.
Okay. Now it is two in the morning. Boil up some wide egg noodles.
Or resurrect some cooked rice. Ladle out a reasonable bowl of the
soup. Add a splash of vermouth. Nuke this in the microwave (this is
the true purpose of a microwave, after all) for a couple of minutes.
Add in the noodles (or rice).
Eat. Then go back to bed. Recipe
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