Stick to your ribs chicken soup for babies, toddlers and adults

Why is it I keep wanting soup?  It's June!  Maybe it's the dreary weather.  Well this soup will warm the cockles and cheer up the drizzliest of days.

Well things could not be any less dreary in the Mamacook household!  Not only have I recently been in my local paper but I was on our local radio station today talking about the Britmums Brilliance in Blogging awards!  The lovely Holly Bell (who you may know from the Great British Bake Off or her blog recipes from a normal mum) interviewed me about my blog and made the whole, frankly terrifying experience a lot less stressful.

Anyway, back to normality and the recipe!

Chicken soup - serves 2 adults and 1 toddler.  Would be great for babies on soft solids / finger foods as it's very thick as the pearl barley absorbs a lot of the stock.

Ingredients

700ml, 25floz of home made chicken stock (see below for instructions)
1 chicken stock cube (optional and depending on the strength of your stock)
200g, 7oz cooked chicken
1 carrot, finely diced
50g, 2oz pearl barley
100g, 3.5oz frozen peas

Method

For the stock:

This is where having a slow cooker is a great thing.  Put all of the bones, skin and nasties into your slow cooker, cover with boiling water and put on high.  Once boiling, reduce the heat to low and simmer for about 3 hours.  Longer isn't necessarily a problem.  This is a great way to get the most out of a sunday roast chicken.  You will find if you only have one carcass though that the stock isn't as strongly flavoured as you might like but if you don't have 2-3 carcasses burning a hole in your fridge, the way to cheat is to use some home made stock and a stock cube.  That way you get the mouth feel and depth of flavour from the home made stock with a bit more oomf.

If you're making this for a baby, it's probably a good idea to seek out a low salt stock cube or miss it out as it can be a bit high in salt.

For the soup:

Couldn't be easier.  Bring the stock to the boil in a saucepan, add the pearl barley and bring to the boil.  Simmer for 45 mins then add the carrots.  Simmer for a further 10 minutes then add the chicken and peas.

Once everything is hot and cooked through, serve.

My son loved this.  He ate it with some buttered sourdough then had a really good nap despite loads of hammering and drilling going on in my kitchen.  I like to think it was the warming cuddle of a bowl of soup inside his tummy.