My Dad became a bachelor later in life, and one of his thrills of single life is having "the boys" over for football and fried chicken each Sunday during the fall. After a few test runs with the deep fryer, he became a wiz at making spicy fried chicken with a perfect, crispy batter. Unfortunately being a bachelor, he was still no wiz at picking up after himself. As a result, I would end up crashing the party and picking up after the boys club. Needless to say, the chicken bones started adding up and begged to be put to better use. As I was painstakingly picking the residual batter off the bones, I got lazy and threw them in the pot anyway. After straining the stock through a sieve, I found the flour from the batter had thickened the stock a bit and the spices had given it a more distinctive flavor than your average broth. Because it has a slightly spicy quality, it's perfect for balancing with the sweetness in butternut squash soup or pea and mint soup, but it will do equally well for a classic chicken noodle soup. The beauty of making this is that if you don't have any leftover fried chicken bones to work with, you've got an excuse to have a fry-up at home or go out and get your favorite bucket. —theicp
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