When we roast a chicken, there’s always an additional meal gleaned from the chicken for dishes like tacos, stir fry, salads or soups. Makes mid-week meal planning super easy when this back-up food is ready and waiting. The other day we roasted a chicken and made a Chicken Black Beluga Lentil Bowl with Harissa (on my blog page if you’d like to check out the recipe). It was fabulous. We only used a third of the chicken, so with the remainder I made this very comforting bowl of chicken noodle soup. We needed soup this weekend to lift our mood. A light, bright, simple soup like chicken noodle sounded good to everyone. From the roasted chicken, I pulled most of the remainder meat and set it aside for the end of the soup simmer and with the carcass made the broth, which was simmered low and slow, for about 2 hours with filtered water, organic celery, organic carrots, onion, garlic, black peppercorns and bay leaves ~ our house smelled amazing. The aromas alone magically uplifted moods. Totally comforting . After two hours, the broth was strained and we were left with this gorgeous gold slurping liquid.
DID YOU KNOW?
Chicken is high in tryptophan, which is an amino acid that serves as a vehicle for producing niacin that’s essential for creating the neurotransmitter, serotonin. Serotonin enhances mood and gives you sense of comfort. Chicken soup not only gets its reputation for being a cure-all for colds, but for being a comfort food and mood enhancer because of these important elements.
Here’s how we made the Chicken Cavatappi Moodle Soup:
Makes 4-5 portions
INGREDIENTS
- 3/4 lb cavatappi pasta, cooked al dente
- 1 T olive oil
- 1 large onion, cut in half and sliced thin
- 1/2 C organic celery, diced
- 3 cloves fresh garlic, minced
- 1-1/2 tsp dry thyme (or fresh)
- 3 organic bay leaves
- 1-1/2 qrts (6 cups) organic chicken broth, homemade or store bought
- 2-1/2 C pulled, roasted chicken (homemade organic or store-bought organic*)
- 1 tsp fresh lemon juice
- 1 lb organic baby spinach, raw
- 1 tsp Kosher salt
- 1/2 tsp cracked black pepper
- 1/4 C organic Italian parsley, chopped
Cook your cavatappi al dente in well salted water (approximately 8 minutes). Drain and set aside until soup is ready. in a medium stock pot on medium heat, add olive oil, onion and celery and cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Add garlic, thyme and bay leaves and cook for another 3 minutes. Add in chicken broth, pulled chicken and lemon juice and bring to a boil. Immediately, reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove bay leaves, add in spinach, cavatappi, salt and pepper. Ladel into large bowls, garnish with chopped parsley and more cracked pepper and watch your mood levels. They’ll go up immediately!
*It is highly recommended to use organic chicken when making homemade bone broth. The health of poultry that the bones come from directly influences the primary health benefits derived from the bone broth. The term organic is defined as: NO pesticides, growth hormones, antibiotics, or chemical fertilizers, When making bone broth you are leaching out the nutrients that make sipping bone broth beneficial, however, using conventional chickens can sometimes mean you are also leaching out unwanted, dangerous chemicals that have been absorbed into the bone and marrow.