Recipes: Chipotle Lime Chicken Soup and Slow Cooker Chicken

I roasted the most yummy chicken a few days ago. It was a decent sized bird, leaving me with a good amount of leftovers. Today, I turned that into a pretty nice soup – spicy, smoky, citrusy, with a lot of protein goodness. If you make this, keep in mind that my measurements are approximate because I use the eyeball method of cooking.

Chipotle Lime Chicken Soup

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil (or fat of your choice)

1 large onion, diced

2/3 poblano pepper, seeded and diced

Leftover dark and white chicken, probably about 2 to 2.5 cups when diced

Leftover chicken juices, about 1.5-2 cups

4 cups chicken stock

3 tablespoons lime juice

1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon ground chipotle pepper (I get mine from Penzey's.)

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

In a good sized pot over medium-high, heat the oil and saute the onion and poblano until the onion is beginning to be translucent. Add the remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and cook on low for an hour or two.

Eat!

Slow Cooker Roasted Chicken

This is how I arrived at the leftover chicken and chicken juices that I used for the soup.

5 pound roasting chicken (this one came from Skillington Farms)

1 large onion cut into about 8 wedges

Extra virgin olive oil

Paprika

Salt

Pepper

Rinse chicken and pat dry with paper towels. Put the chicken, breast side up, in a 6-quart slow cooker. I raised my chicken up off the bottom by using four tiny stainless steel pinch bowls. I thought it would help keep the chicken up out of any liquid it produced. Separate some of the onion wedges, leaving them in decent chunks, and distribute them evening around the chicken, so that they drop to the bottom of the crock. Sprinkle paprika on the visible parts of the chicken until it's about 40% covered. Sprinkle probably about 1/2 teaspoon sea salt and 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper over the chicken. Drizzle olive oil on the chicken. Probably about 1/2 tablespoon or so. Cover the crock pot/slow cooker. Cook on high for one hour. Reduce to low for another 8 hours.

When the chicken was done, I let it rest in the pot with the heat off for about 20 minutes. Then using a couple of large wooden utensils, I lifted the chicken from the resulting liquids and well-cooked onions onto a cutting board. I strained the dark, rich liquid (it's a slow cooker so the chicken made a lot of liquid) through a strainer into a bowl. I pulled most of the chicken off of the bones because no one else in my family likes to deal with bones. (I'm not saying it happened, but I might have eaten a serving of chicken in the process.) After serving slices and pieces of chicken with the juices on the side, I refrigerated the leftovers separately. This also gave me a chance to skim the fat off the of the gelled liquid before using it in my soup.

Please feel free to change any of this. Roast your chicken breast side down. Use herbs. Try a clay oven instead of a slow cooker. Change up the oil. On the soup, use more or less chicken. Maybe use lemon instead of lime. Toss in some garlic. I'm just hoping to offer some inspiration for your own creative endeavors. Happy cooking!