Kale & Garlic Chicken Soup
2 TBL oil
5 cloves of fresh garlic, minced
3 TBL tomato paste
3 Cups homemade chicken stock*
1 tsp lemon juice*
1 lb fingerling potatoes, cut into 1” pieces
½ Cup shredded carrot
salt to taste
½ a bunch of frilly kale, chopped
1 Cup of cooked chickpeas
2 Cups shredded cooked chicken, mostly dark meat
This is one of those what-do-I-have recipes. I don’t have any problem with someone buying all the ingredients specifically to make a soup, but soup can be so forgiving and flexible that, to me, it’s the kind of thing you make when you are trying to make order out of chaos.
Chicken stock is something I pretty much always have on hand. I make it out of the bones of every roasted chicken, including rotisserie chickens from the grocery store. My freezer holds stock ends (carrot butts, garlic and onion trim, mushroom stems, ginger, celery surplus, and sometimes bell pepper seeds and membranes) and I always have bay leaves. To make stock, I basically use Alton Brown’s Bird to the Last Drop recipe, without adding the finishing details of the soup. I never measure anything! The chicken bones, vege stock ends, and bay leaf go into a pot that will hold it all, then I cover it with water and simmer it for half an hour. I let everything cool enough to handle, then strain. (If you are making vege stock, you get the richest flavor by letting it cool completely before straining.) I don’t worry about the fat, because it will harden in the refrigerator. I can scrape it before using the stock.
This particular stock gets an asterisk because it wasn’t normal stock. When I roasted the half chicken (for the meat for the soup) yesterday, instead of putting an inch of water at the bottom of the roasting pan, I used chicken stock. So this “stock” had all the drippings from a chicken rubbed with blackening spices and spritzed with lemon juice. Cold, it was thick and gelatinous. This makes an awesome base for gravy and adds that marrow goodness to the soup. Because the lemon flavored the base, I didn’t add any additional lemon. If using store-bought or plain homemade stock, I strongly recommend lemon juice or lemon salt with leafy green soups. It brings the tomato, greens, and beans/chickpeas together really well.
I’m going to admit that I used the scraped chicken fat from the stock to sautee the garlic. A lot of that fat was the red palm oil that I used on the roasted chicken. This stuff is super deliciously amazing and not to be wasted: Nutiva Red Palm Oil
1. Sautee the minced garlic in the oil until the garlic is aromatic, about 1 minute. Add the tomato paste and cook for another minute. Add the stock.
2. Allow the liquid to come to a simmer. Add the potatoes. Add the carrots.
3. Simmer 30 minutes or until the potatoes are tender (but not falling apart).
4. Meanwhile, cut up your kale and chicken.
5. When the potatoes are cooked, taste your soup. Add salt if needed. Add the kale and chickpeas. Continue to simmer on low heat, covered, for 10 more minutes.
6. Add your chicken. Give it just long enough to get warm, then serve your marvelous soup.
I enjoyed mine with some crusty sourdough bread. It had a full flavor, with sourness from the tomato paste and the lemon that worked well with the other ingredients. A lot of kale soups ask for chopped tomatoes, but I'm glad I didn't have any because I think they would have overwhelmed the tender little potatoes. It was also a pretty soup, thick with ingredients and pretty in color.
