Recipes

Some of these recipes will be 100% ‘Wild’, some won’t be, but all are delicious. If you have your own garden and collect your own wild plants, you can make the meals much more nutritious than conventional store-bought items, as the soil they are grown in will be far superior to something which has been endlessly farmed and not replenished. I only use store-bought items when absolutely necessary, as I strive to be a bit more independent, and tend to cook seasonally by what is available to me locally. And in the winter time, that means a LOT of soup. Which is great, because my family LOVES soup! 🙂

SOUPS

Homestyle Chicken Soup with Rice

· 1 Big Honkin’ soup pot (10 qt+ )
· 3 large potatoes
· 1 large onion
· 2 large pinches of dried rosemary needles
· ½ bag of dried split peas. (Use full bag if you like)
· (optional) add 1 small bag of dried beans. Pinto, kidney, whatever. Be sure to have soaked them ALL night long in water, the night prior to making this. Do NOT add raw dried beans to soup without leeching them first. They’re mildly toxic.
· Chicken. Fresh or Frozen. TWO drumsticks and thighs will work well for your first pot. I typically use whatever is on sale, as it all makes great soup.(Especially the bones!) If you want to sacrifice an entire chicken for this, it’ll make the best, richest, brothiest darn soup you’ve ever had!
· salt (see below)
· 1 pan of cooked rice. (Follow directions on back of rice container.)

DIRECTIONS

Fill soup pot ¾ full with water and set to boil.

Cut up potatoes and onions into small cubes and put into the pan. The water does not have to be boiling, just put it in, it will be fine.

Add pinches of rosemary and cover pot with lid.

Go do something else until it’s boiling.

Once boiling, add your half bag of split peas (and beans if you are using them.) Cover pot with lid.

Go do something else until it’s boiling again.

Add your chicken to the pot. Cover pot with lid.

Go throw a catnip ball at your cat, or browse the internet until it’s boiling again.

Turn down heat on soup to where it’s only slightly boiling. If boiling is ‘5’, then a setting like ‘4’ should be where it needs to be. Adjust to your stove as needed.

Let soup cook for about 2 hours. The meat should flake off easily and come off the bone.

Using a slotted spoon, pull one of the pieces of meat out of the pot, and place onto a plate. Place the plate on a flat surface like a kitchen table. (Careful, it’s HOT!) Be sure to re-cover pot with lid, as it may take you a bit to shred each piece of meat.

Shred apart meat (and fat and skin!) using two forks. One to hold it, one to flake it. Then put EVERYTHING, including the bones back into the pan. (Bones make the BEST broth!)

Take out the next piece of meat, and repeat until you are done.

Add 5 cups cold water to the pan. This is how much will have evaporated, roughly, in the time it took to cook.

Put the lid back on and let cook for another hour, and it should be done.

Serve over a half bowl of your favorite cooked rice.

Enjoy soup, and ponder why you’d ever bother eating at a restaurant ever again.

salt to taste (use real sea salt!) I’ve perfected this to how I like it, so I just add mine directly into the pan with the water. It works better this way IMO, but you’ll want to probably add it ‘per bowl’ until you get it down pat, or if you are serving a number of different people, who will like theirs more or less salty than you.