Chicken soup question

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lace a whole fresh chicken in a pot of water with chopped celery, onion, carrots, garlic, fresh parsley, bay leaf, salt and pepper. Cook chicken on slow simmer for a couple of hours.

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this will result in dry, stringy tasteless chicken in your chicken soup. to make broth, yes simmer for hours, but simmer the bones, not the chicken

if you bring the pot to a boil, boil the chicken for 10 minutes, turn off the heat and let poach for about 1HR, then debone/chill the chicken and simmer the bones, you will have a chicken soup worth your time

I'll cut up the chicken in pieces like I'm going to fry it. Then I'll season the chicken with salt and pepper and brown it off lightly in a very little bit of either olive oil or bacon grease.

Then once browned a bit, I'll pull it out and add to the pot my onion, bell pepper, celery, carrots and garlic to cook just enough to get a bit of color, then add a quart of chicken stock, the chicken back in the pot and cover it with water enough to cover the chicken by a couple inches.

Then I'll add my bay leaves, Worcestershire sauce, a bit of soy sauce and let this cook for a couple hours on a low boil until the chicken is about to fall off the bones.

Pull the chicken and allow to cool, strip off the meat and either pull of cut it up in nice chunks and reserve.

I use either Vermicelli or thin spaghetti and will turn off the pot of stock, add the pasta and the residual heat will cook it. When the pasta is still al-dente, I'll put the cooled off chicken back in the pot to help cool off the broth and not overcook the pasta.

When I fix this in the winter months, I'll often go out in my garden and pull some Swiss Chard, collard greens or Kale and cut up the leaves and add it to the soup for some color and a bit more substance.