chicken & courgette soup.
This is my current favourite soup.. Mostly because it stays lovely & green, without taking on that horrible greyish brown-y green colour of the overcooked vegetables you used to get given at primary school.
You can use chicken thighs or breasts for this.. (Must refrain from making a ‘Do you prefer thighs or breasts, wink wink nudge nudge oh-ho-ho’ type comment, it is not the Christmas dinner table & I am no one’s stereotypical dirty uncle.) I used chicken thighs, you can buy them already boned, or if you have a spare half hour or so bone them out yourself, and it’s not too difficult if you have a sharp knife & some kitchen scissors.
This makes a big bowlful which will feed about 4 for lunch – it keeps well in the fridge for a couple of days too.
Ingredients:
- Chicken thighs boned & skinless (Or about 2-3 chicken breasts, also skinless.)
- A large onion, white or red, it doesn’t matter.
- Chicken or vegetable stock.
- About 4 courgettes.
Method:
- Chop the onion then add it to a large saucepan to soften.
- Cut the chicken into bite size pieces & add to the softened onion to brown.
- Once it’s all browned cover the chicken with a good amount of vegetable stock & leave to simmer on low for 30-40 minutes.
- Grate the courgettes.
- Once the chicken has simmered stir in the grated courgette & cook for a further 5-10 minutes.
You can then leave the soup as it is or run it through a food processor, although if you do that be sure to take the chicken out first, it gets a revoting baby food texture if you put it through a food processor! This is a really nice way of using up a large crop of courgettes from the garden. (Although I type that rather bitterly as all my courgettes this year stayed small & then went mouldy. I think we had one off the whole plant that was edible. Boo.)
