Helen Graves uses organic chicken drumsticks as the key flavour in her warming chicken soup recipe. Cosy up with a big bowl of the richly-flavoured broth and dunk in her easy garlic bread, flavoured with fragrant tarragon. 

Cooking Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Serves: 4

What You’ll Need:

Chicken soup

• 1kg organic chicken drumsticks
• 2 sticks of celery, finely chopped
• 3 carrots, finely chopped
• 2 onions, roughly chopped
• 800ml of chicken stock
• 2 bay leaves
• 5 peppercorns
• small bunch of flat leaf parsley 

Tarragon garlic bread

• 1 baguette
• 1 bunch of tarragon, leaves roughly chopped
• 100g of butter, at room temperature
• 3 garlic cloves, crushed

What To Do:

• To start the soup, add the chicken to a large pan along with the vegetables, bay leaves and peppercorns. Separate the parsley stalks and leaves, reserving the leaves for garnish and adding the stalks to the pan
• Pour cold water into the pan to cover everything then bring to the boil over a medium heat on the hob
• Once simmering, use a spoon to skim off any scum that appears on the surface of the soup (this will help improve the final flavour of the soup)
• After an hour, strain the soup and set aside the chicken pieces, discarding the other flavourings. Place the soup back on a gentle heat
• Preheat the oven to 160°C/gas mark 3
• When cool enough to handle, remove the skin from the chicken and shred the meat into the soup. Stir together and season with salt and pepper
• To make the tarragon garlic bread, use a serrated knife to slice into the baguette, cutting deep grooves but not cutting all the way through
• Mix together the tarragon and garlic with the butter to create a flavoured paste. Spread this into each slice and wrap the whole baguette in foil
• Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes then serve with soup, garnished with the reserved parsley leaves

Recipe by Helen Graves courtesy of www.greatbritishchefs.com