Pictures to aid chicken Soup recipe in the Hearty Cafe

[Speakeazi]

Hope this helps re size of pan and that white but is what you need to skim off

[MichaelJH Heart Star]

Mum's was never made soup with a whole chicken usually a couple of pieces. Whole ones were for a Sunday roast.

[Sunnie2day]

Wow, a whole chicken? That must make the most wonderful chicken soup chock-a-block with chicken bits. The best we ever got was clinging-to-the-bone bits when the grans made chicken stock, and maybe deboned bits of left-over Sunday Roast (lol, usually off the wings and 'drumsticks'). I freely admit I'm typing this with full-on soup envy!

But, erm, skin on? Even without heart problems my grans were adamant about skinning what ever chicken bits were going into the stock pot. Why? Owing to the 'white bits' - fat. (PS - unskimmed, those white bits go an absolutely unappetising grey-green, truly off-putting in my experience)

I am going to give plopping a whole - but skinned fat chicken in the pot, what a marvellous idea, thank-you! (And yes, I do have a ginormous stock pot to do that in).

[Speakeazi]

The skin probably holds the chicken together. I always do it that way cos my mum does it like that!!l

[Sunnie2day in reply to Speakeazi]

That makes sense - if Mum/Gran did it, she likely had a really good reason. Lol, perhaps my grans skinned the chicken to avoid having to stand over a steaming cauldron skimming off the floating fats, I never thought about that.

This weekend is my Christmas bake-ahead weekend so next weekend will be my chicken soup weekend and I'm quite looking forward to giving your recipe a go. I have a feeling it's going to become my go-to recipe.