Orzo "Everything" Soup with Out Of This World Stock

Over time Six-Seven-Eight has developed several regular "columns," which cover specific types of food or methods of cooking, such as "Interconnecting Meals," "From Ordinary to Extraordinary," "Grilling Season '12," and so on. Today sees the collision of two of those regular entries in our blog series, as this soup we're about to explain in detail is both a look at "Novel Noodles" and "Interconnecting Meals!"

Earlier this month we showed how to make coffee rubbed whole chicken, which ended up getting stretched into several different meals, as well as maple-molasses coffee pork ribs for an all Fall-themed dinner. When those amazingly flavorful meals were finally all gone, we still had the bones remaining - which meant it was time to make an absolutely out of this world soup stock.

To get this stock started, chop up carrots, onions, green onions, and poblano pepper into large pieces. The addition of the poblano is a new twist for our standard stock recipe, and a great choice, as it's not very hot but still packs a lot of flavor.

All the ingredients are cooked in a pan along with hot oil until they start to soften up and release all those wonderful aromas. Feel free to add in any seasonings that strike your fancy and will go well with whatever bones you happen to be using. Garlic powder, pepper, and salt are a good starting combination, but go wild and add spicy ones like crushed red pepper, or add in things like celery salt, oregano, or any other seasoning in the spice rack.

Next add in several cups of water until your pan is nearly full and throw in the bones of whatever meat you've recently finished. Here we've both got the chicken carcass and the bones from the ribs, adding in two very potent flavors and ensuring we completely use everything we buy and get the most bang for our buck at the grocery store.

Bring the stock to a boil and then reduce the heat and simmer for several hours, stirringly occasionally. Turn off the heat and allow to cool, then place strain out all the bones and vegetables. Place the remaining liquid stock in a tupperware container and set in the fridge. We recommend letting the flavors mingle in the fridge for a full day before either using for a soup, or freezing to use later. Trust us on this - if the stock is good when it cools, it will be amazing a day later after the flavors have time to develop. Our finished stock, with all those different flavors mingling together, was good enough on its own to simply drink straight as broth!

For our soup we've decided to use a pasta that almost never sees a place in our cabinet: orzo! This is a fun little pasta that's almost more a type of rice, and it plumps up nicely and soaks in liquids, making it great for soup.

To start the soup, we've chopped up fresh spinach and the leftover chicken meat from the whole chicken. You can also see below the leftover pinto beans from when we made bean and rice enchiladas earlier in the week. As always, we recommend getting bagged beans and soaking them yourself instead of buying canned. Not only is the flavor better, but you save money, and they will cause less unpleasant gas if you change out the water frequently. If you aren't sure what to do with a whole bag of fresh spinach, we recommend using the remainder in omelettes or breakfast skillets.

This "everything" soup needs some more veggies, so we're going to use a frozen bagged medley that features carrots, green beans, cauliflower, red bell pepper, and zucchini. You can of course use fresh, but this was actually the cheapest way to get that many vegetables, and they come pre-chopped.

We don't have any vegetables that need to be sauteed first here, so the stock we made previously goes straight into the pan along with all the other ingredients and we bring everything to a boil.

For the orzo however, we do want that to be a bit crispier before it goes into the soup. To start the orzo, melt some butter, and then pour the pasta in and cook for a few minutes.

When the orzo hits this beatiful golden brown color, you are good to go.

The orzo is poured straight into the boiling soup, and then the heat is reduced to simmer.

Here's the soup after simmering a brief time, and all the flavors are now really coming together. It's not quite ready yet, however, as it needs at least an hour (or possibly longer!) to reach full flavor and have the pasta soak up more of the liquid.

This is a finished bowl of delicious "everything" orzo soup. Notice how the orzo has plumped way up? It makes this soup very hearty and less thin tasting. Bake some french bread for dipping and you've got a full meal ready to go, filled with both proteins from the chicken and beans, but also lots of veggies for a well rounded dinner.