Chicken & Sweetcorn Soup

There are loads of recipes out there for chicken and sweetcorn soup, it’s not a terribly radical concept. I’ve been through several borrowed concepts and ideas and have come up with this. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

One of the things I do most weekends is get a load of chicken thighs, roast them, strip them, and use the bones to make stock. They’re dirt cheap. You can throw the meat into any dish, strips of chicken with a salad, or in a stew it starts to fall apart and thickens the sauce.

You can make stock with carrots and celery and onions, but unfortunately both onions and celery set off my IBS so I don’t bother. Frankly this has enough flavour in it that you don’t need it.

Ingredients

• 1kg chicken thighs, skin on.
• 250g frozen sweetcorn
• 2 cloves garlic, sliced.
• 1 egg, beaten.
• 1.5 litre water
• 3 tsps cornflour
• 50ml white wine (optional)

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 180^oC. Place the chicken thighs in a roasting tin with a drizzle of oil, a sprinkle of salt, and a twist or two of pepper. You can add a couple of unpeeled garlic cloves here if you want. Place in the oven and roast for around 45 minutes or until the skins are golden brown and crispy.
2. Carefully use a fork to peel a skin off one of the thighs because they’re beautifully crispy, the world’s gone to crap and this little bit of perfection will cheer you up. Leave the thighs to cool. Then eat a chicken skin, it won’t burn your mouth now.
3. Once cool get a container or two into which you’re going to place the chicken flesh (old takeaway containers with a lid work well), and a large pan for the bones, skin and gristle – this will be your stock.
4. Pop the chicken in the fridge.
5. Add 1 litre of water to your stock pan (and the wine if you’re using it) and bring it to a lightest of simmer – you want to reduce the liquid over a long time to bring out the best flavour.
6. Boil 500ml water and pour it into your empty roasting tin, and scrape with a wooden spoon or spatula to get at the flavours sticking to the tin. Pour this into the stock pan. I leave my stock for several hours, at least 2 hours on a low heat. The smell is amazing. Once your stock has reduced by about a quarter or a third you’re about ready so leave it to cool.
7. Once the stock is cool, strain it. You can go ahead to the next step right away, or you stay right here and remove some of the fat. Pour the stock into containers that you can put in the fridge (old plastic soup tubs are ideal), and leave until the stock sets, ideally overnight. The fat will rise to the top and then you can easily scoop it out. You won’t remove all the fat (nor should you for fat has flavour), but you’ll get a lot.
8. When you want to make your soup, place your sweetcorn in a bowl and defrost by covering with boiling water, leave to stand for several moments before straining.
9. Add a little oil to saucepan, add your garlic, and fry on a medium heat for 2 minutes. Add your chicken and sweetcorn and cook for 5 minutes and then cover with your stock and bring to a simmer. Put your cornflour in a small bowl and mix with 4 tsps of water to create a slurry. Add the slurry to the pan, stirring until the soups starts to thicken. Once the consistency settles after 2-3 minutes, remove from the heat.
10. Add salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle your beaten egg over the soup, using a fork or chopstick to create the classic strands of egg throughout the soup.