Ready to Roast Chicken Part 2

Oyster mushrooms. Bleedin’ weird looking yokes.

So…this meal was a little bit better than Part 1. I would recommend using this recipe as a leftover dish when you’ve made your own roast chicken on a Sunday because it was really very good. It was totally easy to make and, provided you have the pre-cooked shredded chicken ready, it only took around 20 minutes, chopping and stuff included. Perfect for a Monday night after a Sunday Roast, in fact.

As I said in my previous post, I had bought the pre-roasted free range chicken from M&S to give it a go. It turned out to be very dry but passable. This recipe was a lot better at hiding the dryness, seeing as it was served swimming in a load of chiken stock, noodles and veg!

I was inspired by this recipe over here but my variation of it is as below.

What you need for leftover roast chicken noodle broth for 4

Leftover roast chicken, shredded by hand or chopped into wee bits

A few bunches of lovely fresh pak choi, washed and leaves chopped into sizeable chunks. I used the chopped stalks too to give the whole broth a bit of crunch.

A bunch of oyster or shittake mushrooms, washed

A pack of tofu (I bought the normal kind in brine and fried it up – sometimes the fried tofu you can buy in shops is really spongy and gross so…DIY!)

Juice of half a lime

600 ml of chicken stock

Enough noodles for whoever’s eating (we used egg noodles but you could use whichever ones you like)

2 tbsp of soy sauce

I had that second half of the pre-roasted chicken in the fridge so I popped that in the oven for about 20 minutes this time, to see if it would be any less dry. I also squeezed the juice of about half a lime over it all before popping it in at 200 degrees C. The end result was more or less the same. Still a bit dry, but not completely without taste. Just ok. Totally proving the rule that once you taste the good stuff, there’s no going back really.

I let the hot chicken sit and cool off for a while before attempting to shred it up for this soup/broth.

First things first for the soup/broth, chop up your tofu into wee chunks. I used half of a 700g packet and it was FAR too much! Just use as much as you think you and whoever is eating would like in their soup/broth!! Cut the tofu into little squares and fry with oil in a frying pan over a medium heat. It takes a good long time for them to go nice and brown so I’d get them on before the noodles and all the rest. Keep an eye on them and give them a shake or a turn from time to time.

I started off the rest of the broth by frying a few of the pak choi stalks in olive oil in a big pot. Then I poured over the boiling hot chicken stock and soy sauce, letting it come to a full on boil. I popped in the noodles and mushrooms to the boiling stock for about 2 or 3 minutes. I squeezed in the half lime as an afterthought towards the end. I think it helped.

At this point, deseed your red chilli and slice it really finely. Don’t touch your eyes or bite your nails after, please and thank you.

Then I added the shredded chicken and the pak choi. I let it all boil together for about 3 minutes or so.

Serve up by plopping into a big bowl, pop a few fried tofu squares on top and finally add your finely chopped red chilli.

Done!

And I kept the bones from the pre-roasted chicken and made some stock so…it was a useful enough purchase for just over 10 euro. Not even close to beating a proper roast chicken though!

MP3

The below track is one that I’ve been listening to rather consistently over the last few days. Hmmmm….I wonder why? It’s from one of my favourite albums of all time, The Three EPs,by the sadly now defunct Scottish group The Beta Band. Enjoy and buy the full album here!

The Beta Band – Dry The Rain – (The Three EPs)