re: TulaneLSU's Perfect 10 Ezekiel 24 quarantine chicken rice soup

Ingredients:
1. One rotisserie chicken
2. Three leeks
3. Eight cups of NOLA S&WB tap water
4. One cup of rice
5. Two tablespoons of butter

Kitchen Utensils:
1. Knife
2. Cutting board
3. Strainer or colander
4. Large glass bowl
5. Dutch oven (I prefer to use a 6 quart)

Stock Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 as you remove as much skin and fat from chicken. Set meat aside.
2. Roast chicken bones in Dutch oven at 350 for 40-60 minutes
3. Add eight cups of S&WB tap water and the leek greens/leaves
4. Cook covered in oven at 350 degrees for 2-3 hours
5. Drain the stock into non-plastic bowl. Set aside. Discard leaves and bones.

Soup Directions (after stock finished):
1. On medium heat stove, melt 2 tablespoons of butter in Dutch oven in which you made the stock
2. Add finely chopped leeks and cook three minutes until translucent
3. Add your reserved chicken stock, rice, and chopped chicken.
4. Bring to boil. Once boiling, immediately reduce to low heat. Keep covered for 30 minutes, stirring halfway.
5. When rice is tender, you are ready to serve. Season to taste with the lemon pepper.

That’s it. Five ingredients. Five cooking tools. Ten steps in total. A perfect 10!

One of the great things about this recipe is that almost nothing goes to waste. To highlight this, I will show you how to make a non-FDA approved face mask with the plastic cover from the chicken. I do not guarantee or even suggest that this will prevent you from getting the new coronavirus. However, if you have nothing else, I believe it would be better than nothing. If the CDC does start requiring that we wear face covers when in public, as is being rumored now, perhaps this could be used. We await their guidance.

To start, use your knife to puncture two holes on the edges of the flat, not curved, plastic border. Retrieve two Fuzzy Sticks (some call pipecleaners) you have left over from TulaneLSU's 2019 Christmas Pilgrimage III: Bead Crafting. Insert one end of the fuzzy stick in the opening and twist it on itself to secure it. Do the same with the other fuzzy stick through the other hole. You should have two stick pointing up, almost like the temples of bifocals. This is where you bring those two long sticks together, around your scalp and twist them together. This mask is easily adjustable to fit almost any sized head. Do not sleep with this mask on, because it could suffocate you. If you start feeling dizzy or like you might pass out, take off the plastic mask. It is not intended for use in children. Its most useful function may simply be preventing you from touching your face.



I include a picture of the adorned mask on my instructional Raggedy Ann. Mother gifted her to me. She has been a great friend through many rough times, and I am happy she would help me teach you today.



Back to cooking. We live in interesting times and waste should not be in our vocabulary right now. Perhaps our society’s culture of wastefulness is partly to blame for this outbreak. In any event, Americans would do well to learn to become more frugal, less wasteful, and more self reliant. One way we can accomplish this triune task, besides making our own masks from Sam’s rotisserie chicken plastic covers, is by making our own chicken stock. The bonus here is that homemade chicken stock is vastly superior to any brand of premade stock.

Deconstructing the chicken is the first, most labor intensive, and messiest part of making this dish. I like my chicken stock clean and with as little fat as possible. To accomplish this goal, I begin by denuding all skin from the chicken. This is always easiest when the chicken is still warm. If you refrigerate the chicken, getting all the skin off is like trying to peel a shrimp that has been boiled too long. Yes, you are losing seasoning and spices when you remove the skin, but the stock does not need that seasoning.



Once all the skin is off, I begin tearing apart the carcass, removing leftover organs and meat. I like to pretend I am in animal sciences anatomy class, so will try to recall every anatomic landmark, muscle, and organ possible. Sometimes more organs are in the chicken’s thoracic and abdominal cavities than you would expect. Today, I was able to identify the chicken’s pancreas, which is usually removed or obliterated. The above picture shows our chicken likely had pancreatitis. I conject it was the chicken’s visceral fat, which released UFAs, thus blocking complexes I and V, which caused this state of the pancreas. Poor thing.

Get your hands in there. This is a dirty job, which is why I usually do two birds at the same time. I eat the wings at this time, the only time I ever eat chicken wings, the worst part of the bird. It usually takes me eight minutes to deconstruct each bird, depending on how intent I am on identifying anatomic features. The more you do this, the quicker you will get. The end result per bird is about half a pound of marrow-laden bones and two and a quarter pounds of pure meat, as pictured below.



The chicken meat you will reserve to the side as we prepare the stock. For this, I add either a little butter or olive oil to a Dutch oven and then add all those bones. I cover and put in the oven at 350. I let roast for 40-60 minutes.



While the bones are roasting, you have plenty of time to chop the chicken, finely chop the leeks, or even write a Top 10 list for Tigerdroppings.

Some of you have asked why I don’t often use onions or garlic. This is a fair question. The answer is that leeks are better than both combined. In fact, I substitute leeks for any recipe that calls for onions, garlic and celery. Why use two or three ingredients when one is better? I cut the leaves or stems off the leek roots. I also trim the root. These stems, most would discard, are perfect for the simple stock. I then finely chop the leeks.



You will also have ample opportunity during the roasting of the bones to chop the chicken meat into small cubes. Sometimes, I use a knife. Other times, I use the Korean method of cutting with kitchen scissors. The Korean method takes a little longer, but is more satisfying.

Once your bones are adequately roasted, your home will smell like a country French restaurant. It is now time to add the leek leftover leaves (not the finely chopped leeks) and eight cups of New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board tap water. This is the finest water on the planet. If you do not have access to this water, please do everything you can to obtain it. I know Mayor Ray Nagin is still hopeful the city can bottle it and export it, to great profit for our city. Without this water, I can make no promises how your end product will result. I sometimes add a little salt, but that is not necessary.