A roast chicken means chicken soup.  A chicken carcass is an automatic free meal.  It takes nothing but a bit of leftovers to create a great meal.

A basic chicken soup has no recipe.  It just is.

Seriously… It’s put stuff in a pot and boil.  Place the carcass and whatever meat is still attached, skin, liver gizzard, neck – all the little pieces from the little bag – into a soup pot and cover with cold water.  Bring to a boil and then reduce the heat and simmer for a couple of hours.  You can add some celery, onion, and carrots to the pot – skins, peels, and all – for additional flavor.

Remove from heat and strain.Let the carcass cool and then strip it of every last shred of meat.  It will go back into the pot.

For the soup itself, add the stock and chicken to a pot.  The add whatever you have in the house.  Frozen vegetables, those little tupperware containers of whatever, potatoes, beans, rice, noodles or other pasta…

Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper and anything else you may like or have laying about.

That’s the soup I made last night. It’s slightly different yet always the same whenever I make it.

There are a lot of other chicken soups out there, from Mulligatawny – one of my all-time favorites – to our friend Karen’s Mexican Chicken Soup.

Soup is not difficult.

So that was last night.

Tonight was meatball sandwiches and french fries.  Going gourmet all over the place.

Even the cook doesn’t feel like cooking some nights.  Frozen meatballs, jarred sauce, a fresh baguette, and fontina cheese.  French fries dusted with garlic powder and cayenne pepper.

It worked.