Here’s a recent shot of some homemade chicken soup. It’s based on the recipe for Home-style Chicken Soup in Barbara Kafka’s excellent book Roasting: A Simple Art. This is my second attempt making chicken soup from scratch, and this time I think I made a mistake by making the stock in a slow cooker. The first time I did it I boiled the cut-up carcass on the stove as the book recommends, but this time I didn’t want to watch the stove all day and put it in a slow cooker on high for a few hours, then on low for about 12 hours. The stove-top method seemed to extract a lot more flavour from the bones, probably due to the higher temperatures.

The first time I also deglazed the pan and added the drippings to the stock, but the second time I used the drippings for gravy. So that probably made a big difference as well.

This photo was also an opportunity for me to try some new lighting techniques. It is lit entirely by studio strobes, but the goal was to make the light look as natural as possible. I think I succeeded and it looks very similar to broad window light, yet still has some directional qualities as evidenced by the soft shadows.