Rotisserie Chicken, Rice and Vegetable Soup

I wish I was ready to post part 1 to the "Re-upholstering with a drop cloth" tutorial that I have all written out for you fine folks, but I am still waiting for my pictures that were downloaded to my destroyed laptop to be transferred from the hopefully salvageable hard drive onto an external one.  Fortunately we have a friend who is working on that for me as we speak.  In the meantime, perhaps I can tempt your taste buds with a fantastic and super easy soup.  Anyone who follows my recipes knows that I love to cook with pre-cooked rotisserie chickens.  I pick one up every time I hit up Costsco and usually that little "cluck cluck" (as my little Trav says) feeds us for 3 meals.  When we are getting to the last bits of meat, I typically use it to make a soup.  Here's one of our favorites (ironically from my favorite cookbook, "Favorites- A Collection of Favorite Ivory Family Recipes), adapted to my liking using rotisserie chicken and a few minor changes.

Rotisserie Chicken, Rice and Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

 1 medium yellow onion, diced

6 TBSP butter (the real stuff)

3-4 carrots, peeled and thinly sliced

8 medium sized mushrooms, sliced (if you like fungus... I opt out for this ingredient, thank you very much)

2 ribs of celery, thinly sliced

1 cup uncooked long grain rice

Approx 5.5 cups chicken broth (equivalent to 3 cans if you aren't making some of your own broth)

1/2 cup white wine

1 can green beans

Broth Ingredients

Day 3 of your rotisserie chicken (approx 1/4 the meat of a full rotisserie)

1 bay leaf

3 peppercorns

1/4 of an onion

1 celery rib (leaf included)

 

Directions

Cut the meat off of your rotisserie chicken.  Don't worry about getting it all off, as the meat will fall off the bone when you boil it for your broth.  

Throw the leftover "stuff" (carcass, skin, and fat) into a pot with approx 4 cups water, a bay leaf, 3 peppercorns, 1/4 of an onion (not diced), and 1 rib of celery.

Bring to boil over high heat, reduce to a low boil and cook for approx 20 minutes.

I use this time while my stock is cooking to chop all of my veggies.

 

Remove the pot from the heat, pull out the carcass and set aside (such a gross word when you're talking about food but I really don't know how to say it sweetly), and strain the broth into a large bowl.

 

 

Pull any remaining meat off of the "thing" and any chunks in the strainer, and add to your pile of shredded chicken.

In the same large pot, melt butter over medium heat.  Add sliced veggies (onion, carrots, celery and mushrooms) and saute until tender. 

Add rice, and stir to coat with butter.

 Add 1 can of chicken broth, your homemade chicken broth, and white wine, and bring mixture to a boil. 

Cover, reduce heat and simmer 20 minutes or until rice is tender.

Uncover, add green beans and simmer until heated through, approx 5-10 minutes.  Taste test your broth, and add salt and pepper as needed.  If you didn't get enough flavor from your rotisserie, add a chicken bouillon cube and stir until dissolved. 

 

Scoop into bowls and serve with a warm loaf of crusty French Bread.

Enjoy!

 

~PW