Chicken and Winter Vegetable Soup

It's that time of the year when chicken soup becomes not only dinner, but medicine as well. I patched this recipe together at work the other day and thought I would translate it into a home style recipe because it was so good. Give it a try.

1 pcs 3 1/2 #chicken
water to cover

A few pieces of carrot peelings, onion skins and celery leafs.

one small onion
one good size carrot
two long stalks of celery
one sweet potato
one medium sized Idaho potato
one large portabello cap
one small head of cauliflower
three garlic cloves
one small turnip
four parsnips
one small rhutabega
a sprig of thyme and rosemary
black pepper and salt

To begin cover the whole chicken with water, bring to a boil, then simmer for 1/2 an hour until fully cooked. Shread the chicken meat and roast the left over bones for 20 min at 500 degrees. Add the roasted bones and vegetable trim to the water you cooked the chicken in to begin with. Let this simmer for at least three hours, any longer than six is overkill. Stain this mixture, and chill. Recover the fat from the stock.

Cut up the vegetables how ever you like. Ideally they will be small enough to fit on a spoon since we are making a soup. Using the recovered fat off the stock sautee the vegetables until 50% cooked. Add the stock, and shreaded chicken to the vegetable mixture and bring to a boil. At this point everything should be cooked through. Season and remove herb stems.

*Roasting the bones adds a deeper complexity to the soup and warms up the house this time of year. It is the step I suggest you not skip.