Chicken Barley Soup

The key to a good soup is to make your own stock. This is especially true for a chicken soup intended to help ease a cold or flu. Stock from a carton or can just doesn’t have the same anti-inflammatory benefits of homemade. There’s just something about the chicken fat that gets extracted from the bones and skin that makes homemade chicken stock into something of a high end moisturizer for a sore throat.

I’m one of those people who saves vegetable trimmings and herb stems for stock. This really only works for certain vegetables, however. Potato skins, onion skins, carrot and parsnip peels are great for stock, but leafy greens will turn the pot bitter, and beets will turn it oddly sweet and blood red. Keep in mind the flavor you’re trying to achieve when collecting your trimmings.

If you’re not into saving vegetable trimmings, that’s perfectly fine. Prepare the vegetables for this soup in advance and save the trimmings to add to the chicken as it simmers. Since the trimmings will be discarded anyway, I like to separate them from the chicken pieces by using a vegetable steamer basket. This way the chicken simmers on the bottom of the pot while the trimmings steep on the top. When the stock is finished, the basket can simply be pulled out and the trimmings tossed. Another benefit of steeping the veggies on the top bunk is that they carry away some of the fat that rises to the top of the liquid as the chicken stews.

I like to chop my veggies into narrow strips the length of a spoon. I just like the uniformity of the way they look more than having little carrot wheels and celery half-moons like cafeteria soups.

Chicken Barley Soup - serves 8

4 carrots
2 parsnips
12 large sprigs parsley (about a half bunch)
4 stalks of celery, plus leaves
5 green onions
1 whole 3 – 3.5 lb. chicken
6 quarts of water
2 C trimmings from potatoes, parsnips, carrots and herbs (optional)
3/4 C barley

Start off by prepping the vegetables.

Place the celery and leaves, green onion trimmings, parsley stems and carrot and parsnip peels and optional added trimmings, if you have them on hand, into a steamer basket.

If the chicken came with the little baggy of innards and the neck, set the liver aside and add the gizzard, heart and neck to the veggie basket. (Bonus Recipe: It’ll be a long time before this soup is done and you’re most likely going to want a little nosh. While this thing simmers, take a tablespoon of butter, melt it in a small frying pan and saute the liver in the butter until it’s no longer pink in the center. Enjoy on toast with a little blue cheese and bask in the horrified stares of onlookers.)

Chop the veggies as desired. Cover and refrigerate.

Bring 6 quarts of salted water to a boil.

Meanwhile, cut the chicken into pieces. Drop the pieces  into the simmering water. Place the veggie basket into the water over the chicken. Bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for 2.5 hours.

By this point the meat will be falling off of the bones. Remove the vegetable basket and discard contents. Carefully remove the chicken pieces with a tongs or a slotted spoon. Strain the stock if necessary to remove any runaway bones.

Allow the chicken pieces to cool enough to handle. The bones should slide right out of the meat. Go through each piece to remove any cartilage or other gristley bits.

Chop any larger pieces into 1 – 2 inch cubes. Cover and refrigerate.

You should now have a big pot of dense, fragrant stock. Add the barley to the stock and simmer 15 minutes. Add the prepared vegetables to the pot and simmer for another 15 minutes. Add the chicken to the pot and simmer for another 15 minutes.

Serve hot.