Recipe: home made chicken soup

I've made this twice now, two portions a pop, and it's been really nice so here's a rough idea of what to do.

It is made in three steps really . . .

Step 1 -I used one chicken leg joint (basically, leg and thigh), skin and all.  I popped it in my little slow cooker with enough water to cover it and a couple of bay leaves.
I cooked it for about five hours on Auto which starts off on high and then turns to low after a while.

Step 2 - Once it had had that time, I took out the chicken, removed all the meat (it fell off) and put all the bones, skin, etc, back in the stock and left it to simmer for another however many hours you fancied.  The chicken meat went into the fridge, well wrapped.

Step 3 - making the soup
I put the chicken stock through a sieve and put the gunk in the recycling.  I looked for floating fat but there really wasn't any.  I tasted and I added a bit of chicken stock powder the second time.  It wasn't necessary the first time.
I used what I had and so could you but what I used was onion, sweet potato, celery, carrot, mushroom, pepper, baby corn, cannellini beans, pasta/noodles, pak choi . . . I think that was it but you can see in the photos.  All chopped into the size you want.
I spray fried onion, sweet potato, celery and carrot in a big enough saucepan before adding the stock, some garlic granules, salt and pepper - add and taste.  When the carrots were soft, I added the rest of the stuff, including the beans and let it simmer until everything was done before breaking up the chicken and addit it.  At this point you could portion out and freeze or keep in the fridge - the flavours definitely improve.
Finally, I added the noodles/pasta and simmered again.  The starch from the pasta slightly thickens the stock which is really nice.

To be honest, that was it.

The first batch had noodles.
The second batch, part one had pasta shapes while I forgot to add pasta to part two and that was also really nice.

So it could be chicken noodle soup, chicken pasta soup or just chicken soup.  Take your pick.  The important bits are the chicken, the stock (you could use commercial stock but hm is nicer and more economical), plus whatever veg, pasta, pulses you have and fancy.  I used cannellini beans because I had some left over that needed using up.

Enjoy!