Cabbage soup with smoked chicken

Cabbage soup with smoked chicken is a simple and quick soup to prepare, which nevertheless turns out to be very, very tasty, rich and fragrant. It would seem that the most ordinary ingredients, but how well they are combined! I highly recommend trying cabbage soup with smoked chicken, especially since it does not take very much time to cook it.
From this amount of ingredients, a five-liter pot of soup is obtained.

Ingredients

• Smoked chicken breast (650 gr. pure meat)
• Cabbage (half a small dense head, about 750 gr.)
• Potatoes (5 medium potatoes)
• Carrots (2 medium)
• Onion (2 large onions)
• Garlic (1 medium head)
• Tomato sauce (5-6 tablespoons without a slide)
• Vegetable oil (1.5-2 tablespoons)
• Green onion (1/2 large bunch)
• Parsley (1/2 large bunch)
• Dill (1/2 large bunch)
• Salt (to taste)
• Bay leaf (5-6 small leaves)
• Allspice peas (8-10 peas)
• Ground black pepper (to taste)
• Dried garlic (1 tbsp without a slide)
• Suneli hops (1 tbsp without a slide)
• Freshly ground coriander (1/2 tbsp.)
• Turmeric (1/3 tbsp.)

Directions

1. Let's prepare all the ingredients. Peel potatoes, carrots, onions and garlic. Cut off a piece of the desired size from a head of cabbage. Wash and dry greens.
2. Remove the skin from the smoked chicken breast (I don’t use it, so I throw it away right away) and separate the meat from the skeleton. We immediately put the skeleton to boil, adding bay leaves and allspice peas to it.
3. I really don’t like it when whole peppercorns come across in the process of eating soup, so I came up with this method: I put the right amount of peppercorns into a closing strainer for tea brewing, thread a long wooden skewer into the ring of the strainer’s handle and lower the strainer with pepper into the pan, resting the edges skewers on the sides of the pot. So the pepper will give its flavor to the broth, and there will be no unpleasant "surprises" when eating the soup.
4. While the skeleton is being cooked and gives its taste and aroma to the future broth, grind all the other ingredients. We will disassemble the smoked chicken meat into fibers, finely chop the cabbage, cut the potatoes into large cubes, carrots and onions into small cubes, finely chop the garlic and herbs.
5. Add chicken meat and potatoes to the pan with the skeleton, salt to taste and cook for 5-7 minutes on a slightly above medium heat (6 out of 9 on my electric stove).
6. You should be careful with salt, as smoked chicken is salty in itself.
7. If you use young spring cabbage, then the potatoes should be boiled almost until cooked, as young cabbage is cooked much faster than winter cabbage.
8. We remove the skeleton from the pan and add the cabbage, bring to a boil and cook the potatoes and cabbage until soft.
9. At the same time, in a well-heated deep frying pan, greased with olive (or other vegetable) oil, add the onion and simmer it over a slightly above medium heat (on my electric stove 6 out of 9) under the lid until translucent, stirring occasionally so that the onion does not start fry.
10. Add the carrots to the onions and continue to simmer until the carrots are soft, stirring occasionally. If necessary, add a little bit of oil.
11. As soon as the carrots become soft, add the garlic, stir, reduce the heat to a small one (on my electric stove 4 out of 9) and continue to simmer until a light, pleasant aroma of garlic.
12. Add tomato sauce, mix thoroughly and simmer for another 5 minutes all together.
13. We remove the strainer with allspice from the pan, add all the spices and vegetables from the pan, mix and keep on fire for another 5-7 minutes.
14. Add chopped herbs, mix and immediately remove from heat. Cover with a lid and let it brew for 10-15 minutes.
15. Any lunch will become a little more pleasant with fragrant and tasty cabbage soup with smoked chicken, which, if desired, can be decorated with sour cream, fresh herbs or crackers =)
16. Bon appetit!