Out of Necessity comes Creativity!

My wonderful, hard working, husband came down with a terrible cold last week and desired nothing more than chicken soup to cure his ails. Having none in the cupboard (since I recently banned all Campbell's Soup products from our household due to the extremely high NaCl content), I was forced to create my own. Chicken Noodle Soup is so common: a bit of chicken, carrots, onions, celery and a few noodles thrown in for good measure. But surely I could get more flavor if the chicken and vegetables were first roasted to a deep, golden brown, bringing out all of the caramelized goodness they had to offer. I had a sweet potato on hand and decided with it's addition, who needed the added starch of noodles. I forgot to take a picture, as I was being kept pretty busy taking care of the sick one in the house, but here is the recipe:

Roasted Chicken Sans Noodle Soup

1 whole chicken

2 stalks celery, sliced

1/2 large onion, coarsely chopped

3-4 carrots, sliced into 2" lengths

1-2 parsnips, sliced into 2" lengths

1/2 lemon

1/2 whole head of garlic, sliced in half horizontally

coarse salt and pepper

Wash and dry chicken, then rub with olive oil and season inside and out with salt and pepper. Put halves of garlic and lemon inside cavity (after sprinkling lemon juice over the chicken and inside the cavity). Roast chicken in a 400 degree oven for 1 to 1 1/2 hours (reach an internal temperature of 165 degrees or when the meat is falling off the bone). 

1 T. butter or oil

1/2 chopped onion

1 medium sweet potato, chopped

more carrots/parsnips, chopped

Melt butter and cook onion until soft. Add chopped sweet potatoes, carrots and/or parsnips and cook until almost soft.

When cool enough to handle, remove meat from the bones and put the carcass into a medium pot, adding just enough water to cover the bones. Simmer about an hour, then strain the stock through a sieve. Slice all of the vegetables roasted with the chicken into bite size pieces and add them to the stock along with the vegetables just sauteed and enough chicken meat to make a nice soup (I had one or one and a half breasts left over for sandwiches). Add up to 1 tsp. ground cumin and more salt and pepper for seasoning. Simmer just until warmed through, then serve. A dollop of plain yogurt and chopped avocado are nice garnishes.