Sand Kitchen

I’ve always been a soup lover. I know that’s not true of everyone, but I find them warming and comforting, and it’s a great way to ease your stomach into a meal if you’ve not eaten for a while. Every Ramadan, I make a big batch of soup once a week and it’s what I break my fast on.

Here’s my favourite in terms of goodness, flavour and satisfaction.

We’re going to start with making a homemade chicken stock, which we’ll then drain, shred the chicken and use the stock to cook the vegetables that will actually make up the soup.

For the stock, you will need:

• A whole chicken
• An onion, quartered
• Three or four cloves of garlic
• Some leeks or celery chopped roughly
• Tops & tails of various vegetables*
• Herb of choice (I used coriander)
• Salt and pepper (or peppercorns, like I used)

* – I used them from the vegetables I was using for a salad and those that I was going to put in the soup later, but whatever you want works

Pop them all in a pot, cover it with water and let it cook on a simmer for about two hours. Simple.

Once it’s cooked, chances are it’ll look a little like this. Get your chicken out and shred, shred, shred, and keep that aside. Pour the rest of the contents through a colander, making sure to collect the stock, of course. Toss the bones and the vegetable remains.

If you’re choosing not to make your own stock (although you should), you can start here.

For the soup:

• A whole chicken, shredded
• ~6 cups chicken stock**
• Two quartered onions
• Two chopped carrots
• Two cups broccoli
• 2 portions spaghetti (I use spelt)
• 1 tbsp chicken masala***

** – use about three stock cubes if you start straight here
*** – or 1/2 tbsp cumin, 1/2 turmeric 

Pop all your ingredients back into your pot, and cook for about 35 minutes.

After 35 minutes, add in your pasta and let that cook for about 10 minutes. Don’t overcook it, you don’t want it to melt into the rest of the soup.

There you go! It’s a simple dish — time consuming, yes, but mostly leaving it alone on the hob. I always batch-make it, as I said, so doing it once a week doesn’t feel like too much work.

Give a go, and let me know what you think! Any questions, pop them in a comment below.

As always, bilafiya!
(well wishes and wellbeing)