Pot Roast Soup

 Have you ever noticed that pot roast and roast chicken are exactly perfect bases for soup? Think about a pot roast: meat, potatoes, carrots, onion and celery.

I make my pot roast in the crock-pot and it turns out perfect every time. If I cook pot roast in the oven well, I get boot leather. So what do you with boot leather? Make soup!

As I stated above, I make my pot roast in the crock-pot. It is simple, quick and the meat can go in frozen. I usually get a roast big enough to make a few meals out of. The kids and I don’t really care to eat roast as leftovers. So why get a big piece of meat? I will slice it for fajitas, enchiladas, smother it in barbeque sauce or make soup.

Pot Roast Soup:
If you know you are going to make soup with your leftovers, return everything to your crock-pot and place in the refrigerator. The next day, I will lift out the solid fat crust and discard. Remove the vegetables and roast, leaving a gelatin broth with onions and celery in your pot.

Chop your vegetables into bite size pieces, adding more carrots and potatoes as necessary. Slice the roast into bite size pieces, remove all fat. Return meat and vegetables to pot, add a bay leave, two cups of beef broth or 2 cups of water and two bouillon cubes. Cook on low heat for 6 hours.

Chicken Soup:

Fifteen years ago, I watched Emeril Lagasse make his chicken noodle soup. After he striped a roast chicken carcass of meat, Emeril took the entire carcass and placed in a soup pot. Emeril made soup with the bones and skin, stating it gave the broth wonderful flavor. It did! 

I made chicken soup that way a few times, but this is not exactly smart. Since Emeril did not remove the skin and bones when he served the soup, it is not exactly child friendly. The young ones do not understand the concept of don’t swallow the bones. I had to come up with a new way to make chicken noodle soup where you get flavor, but not the bones.

I usually find the largest roasting chicken I can find (between 7 to 9 pounds), so we only eat half the bird. I follow the same rules for the pot roast soup with a few exceptions. Do not remove the fat; pull the meat from the bone and chop into bite size pieces. If you do this right between the breast, leg and thigh there should be plenty for soup. (Pickoff the back and remaining rib meat from the bones and save for Chicken Potpie.) Chop carrots, onion, celery, and place in pot with chicken. I also will add frozen peas and corn… about ¼ to ½ cup of each. Add pepper and garlic to taste. If need be, add fat free, low sodium chicken broth and cook on low four to five hours. Add in approximately 2 cups of dry yoke free, egg noodles an hour before consuming.

Time saving and last minute meal fixes to eat within an hour or two:
Crock-pot:
 Turn the crock-pot on high, place raw vegetables in an 8-cup Pyrex measuring bowl with four cups of water and bouillon cube. Cook on high in your microwave for ten to fifteen minutes. Pour into crock-pot add noodles.

Stove top method:
Place two boneless skinless chicken breast cubed, chopped vegetables, chicken broth, and seasonings in stew pot and bring to a boil for five minutes then reduce to a simmer. 15 minutes before serving add in noodles.

Cleaning tip for the day: To clean you grill and oven racks and grates. On a warm day, place racks and grates in a black trash bag, pour in a bottle of ammonia, tie shut and set outside flat in the sun for three hours. Flip after three hours for another two hours.(You might have to move the bag to keep it in the sun.) Remove grates from bag and wash them off with soap and water. Most of all the stuck and burnt chard should just wipe off.

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What To Cook For Dinner?

Sunday, I could not decide what to cook for dinner. I dislike days like when I have no clue what to cook. It is worse when I quiz the family what they want for dinner and I get the standard “I dunno Honey, what do you want?” Even worse is the crickets are chirping, blank stare, with a shoulder shrug, UGH!

A few hours later, I asked the same question. My son gave his standard answer “Can you make red beans and rice?” “No, I just made that two days ago.” The daughter, typical teenager just gives me a shoulder shrug; I roll my eyes at her. The husband, “I don’t know Honey, how about tacos?” Me: Grrrrrr

Tacos and red beans and rice answer translates into AKA “I dunno.”  I pull out my cookbooks and start flipping through them to get inspiration. I came up with a few ideas, but nothing that jumped off the page and said, “Make me!”

We are now three hours away from dinner and I am starting to get frustrated when the husband says, “Why don’t you go to the store for some inspiration?” Which is code for “I want to watch this home improvement show, without having to flip between it and what you want to watch.”With frustration boiling, I throw out the one item that is never turned down, homemade pizza. 
I put all the dough ingredients in to the most used appliance in the kitchen, and go try to reclaim the remote control for the TV. Ten minutes later, from the kitchen comes a huge crash, from the living room "That darn cat!" As soon as those words were spoken Winston, came out from under the couch if on queue. The sound was the bread machine attempting suicide by jumping off the counter and breaking the lid off the hinge. The dough thank goodness was still inside the machine and just needs to rise.

Dinner turned out just fine. The bread machine still turns on, but they do not make replacement lid parts for it. If I can get the lid to stay on the machine, I can still use it, YIPPIE!

 Pizza dough:

3 cups all purpose flour

2 ¼ teaspoon yeast or one packet

2 Tablespoons of  olive oil

1 cup of warm water

2 teaspoons of garlic powder

1 teaspoon each of rosemary and parsley

If you have bread machine place on the dough setting and let it do it work.

To make by hand:

Combine water, yeast, and half of the flour in a large bowl. Mix well (I use my hands) Add remaining ingredients until the dough holds its shape.

Place dough on a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic. If dough is too sticky, lightly sprinkle with flour.

Transfer dough into a lightly oiled bowl, cover with clean lint free kitchen towel and place in a warm area. Let dough rest until double its size. This usually takes an about 45 minutes to an hour.

Preheat oven to 400°F

Remove from bowl and shape dough into olive oil coated pan, I use a 14” X 0.6” Wilson pizza pan.

After dough is shaped into pan, add your choice of sauce and toppings. We use fresh mozzarella, packaged mozzarella cheese, goat cheese, feta, or any variation of any and all of these. Our standard toppings are fresh tomatoes and green peppers from the garden, pepperoni, fresh sausage from the farmers market, onions. Sometimes there might be olives, and jalapeños, bacon or whatever else is in the refrigerator.  

 Cook for twenty minutes. Cool for ten minutes then slice.

Half pepperoni

Fresh vegetables, jalapenos, and fresh mozzarella