[ChefHogan]

You just have to brown, sear, sautee' whatever first! Take away the chicken for the time being. Carmalize & deglaze the pan with a nice rich Chardonnay. Add rice and continue to reduce till rice is seared. In the meantime I would have made a Veloute'/White Sauce. I would not pull chicken to bits,but hand pull it and then using a proper kitchen knife dice it. Now to seasoning and finishing, thats all up to you, myself I would say going with fresh basil & sage theme to enhance the wild rice, tarragon would be nice too. So many different ways you could go. Salt, Pepper all the usual jazz, mix it all up simmer for a hour and VIOLA

PS:Julienne Fresh Baby Spinich and Fresh Corriander goes amazing with creme of chicken, bacon bit and creme fracher garnish, drooool...

:chefHogan

[quote]Originally posted by brie
I'm working on, er, enhancing my recipe for cream of chicken and wild rice soup. The base of the soup is chicken broth (duh); I boil chicken thighs for about 40 minutes an skim off the fat. The chicken gets pulled to bits before being returned to the broth to simmer further while I dump in the rest of the ingredients.

My question to you: would the flavour be much enhanced if, say, I browned the chicken skin-side down first? I assume this would render some fat out immediately, helping keep the calorie content down (provided I drain the fat before adding the water). But would this do anything, flavour wise? [/QUOTE:

[mike]

With soussweets on the browning & chiffonade on the timing.

[soussweets]

and everyone give a big hand for mike on the drums!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Nick.Shu]

by saying should you brown *!* side first, im assuming that you are making your broth from a brown stock.

By assuming this, i would say that it would be prudent to say that to "enhance" the flavour, the chicken carcasses should be roasted and the chicken thighs should be poached gently in a stock.

Chef Hogan is right in saying that the roasting pan should be deglazed (but only if it is a brown stock base).

On the other side, chicken thighs are a brown/dark meat and contain a lot of blood.

My suggestion is that you concentrate on generating the flavour within the soup/broth (i.e. well seasoned) and perhaps grill or roast the thighs - then cool (v important especially when you are slicing the meat) and then return the meat to the soup/broth on reheating.

Another chain of thought is that you smoke the chicken that will be returned to the soup. Again more flavour.

anyway, give it a go.

nick