Chicken noodle soup

I would like there to be beans in this soup.

Anasazi beans. 

 The broth comes from the chicken roasted earlier and the chunks of chicken in the chicken soup came from the same roasted chicken. 

Did I ever show you how to deal with the dead bird carcass to produce a chicken broth so delicious that it is termed Liquid Gold and traded on the EPLCM, that is the Escoffier Precious Liquid Commodities Market? I haven't? Very well. 

You have a roasted chicken as the one pictured in the link above and you picked off all of the good bits and they have gone their separate ways, sandwiches, soup like this one, nibbling and so forth. 

So there is that, and that would be enough, a bargain right there, but now on to the carcass and the broth. 

By acknowledging the anathema that wasting a carcass is to culinary catechism one attempts to extract the most from the sacrificed bird, and that shows consideration, but then to go on and intensify everything by roasting before all the flavors, nutrition, colors, are extracted shows deliberation even though it only takes a few minutes to broil the bones. 

The re-roasted bones are brought to the stove top, water added to the pot, and the whole lot simmered until the last flavor molecule is drawn from the carcass, the skin, the neck, gizzard, livers, heart, everything that came with it. Onion, carrot, celery, now added if you like them. Bay leaf, whatever, anything at all you like, except salt. 

Save salt for the very end or when the broth is portioned out and used. The liquid concentrates as it boils, so it wouldn't do to over salt early on. That is one major problem with commercial broths. They are already heavily salted and concentrating them makes it worse. Why do you pay more for low-salt broth then if they are using less salt shouldn't they charge less? They have to make up the flavor another way when they use less salt, more expensive ingredients, like chicken. 

Straining takes two large pots. There is some back and forth. 

Strained back into the original pot. 

Strained into the storage container using an even smaller strainer. 

These broth photos were taken days ago when the chicken was roasted ↑.

These photos were taken tonight ↓.  

The broth sat in its tall container sealed up beneath its chicken schmaltz lid. Underneath the layer of fat is another layer of aspic. The depth of this aspic and its completeness as gelatin will indicate how much nutrition is extracted from the carcass. If there is a watery layer of gelatin, or none at all, then that will indicate little nutritional value. What you are looking for is gelatin all the way through straight to the bottom, good solid gelatin too, not loosey-goosey watery gelatin. 

This is loosey-goosey watery gelatin, but it is gelatin all the way through, so neither the worst nor the best. I was pleased with it actually when I consider it is a single ordinary battery chicken of no great mass. Usually people freeze them until they have more than one carcass to make the process worth while. 

So what is Anasazi?

The Ancient Ones, although the modern Pueblos do not much care for the designation because the word also means ancient enemy. There were four main tribes inhabiting the area, the Anasazi concentrated in the northern portion of the range covered by the four early tribes. This is in modern day Colorado, shaped like a square, in the far lower left corner. Looking at a map of the  U.S. state borders one's eye is drawn to the geometric oddity near the center termed The Four Corners. That is the area inhabited by the four early tribes although its Four Corners designation would be 3,200 years later. 

The Anasazi were cliff dwellers. Their site is known today as Mesa Verde, green table, Spanish words, not Amerind. The cubicles built into the cliffs are part of a larger system of roads and ritual sites. Their fate is debated. There is the pattern of drought and flood, there is evidence of resource depletion, evidence of conflict. 

You can go there and explore the place. Walk around. Crawl around up and down, up down, up down narrow walkways, short pass throughs, irregularities with every step. Bring up water, bring up wood, bring up supplies, carrying out refuse, litter, compost, waste. One sees rather quickly that life on the cliffs couldn't have been all that splendid. Life in the shadow of the cliff. Protected. Yes. Yes. Yes. But it's the sort of thing that cannot last. Eventually you gotta break out. It leads to greater things -- facing the challenges of nature and conflict uncowed out in the open.

Did they starve? Were they wiped out? Buried by flood? Murdered by enemies? Enslaved? Calm down! They changed. They moved on. They intermingled with neighboring tribes. They evolved. They became the modern Pueblo peoples.  

Here's to getting off the cliffs.