(Originally appeared on danieljhogan.com)
Recently, my safety streak just about came to a disastrous end—all because of a bowl of soup. I enjoy making soup in my slow cooker—you just dump in the ingredients and leave it alone.
Simple, right? When I cook, I have a sort of sixth sense about what I should, or should not, include in a recipe, and it typically never fails (although it did lead to my infamous BBQ Bay Leaf Stir-Fry Pasta).
My Cooky Sense tingled while I threw chunks of veggies and scoops of lentils into the slow cooker. In my freezer, I had bones from a rotisserie chicken. I took a page from the Carl Weathers School of Cooking (as seen in Arrested Development), and kept the bones, because, to paraphrase Carl, there was still plenty of meat on the bones and could be used to get “a stew goin’.”
I pulled the collection of bones from my freezer, which resembled something from The Thing (the old The Thing, not the new The Thing), and hurled a few into the slow cooker.
After a few hours my soup, like a Kardashian marriage, was finished. Each spoonful tasted great, and also brought me closer to my own doom. I was watching Burn Notice an educational program while eating, so my eyes were not on the contents of my spoon.
Then I felt it (no, not presence of my old master)—something like a rock in my mouth, which rolled its way to the back of my throat. I hacked and gagged, and after a spit-take any Stooge would be proud of, a chunk of bone sailed across the room and plinked against my TV screen.
While I had meant to only use the larger leg bones, I had apparently grabbed a few of the smaller, easier to swallow bones too. In this case, a vertebra—and thankfully, a chicken vertebra (you never know).
I told this story to Stephanie [girlfriend – Ed.], and she merely shook her head, as she is prone to do when I explain Anything to her. “Why didn’t you just boil the bones in a separate pot and pour the liquid in the soup?”
I only shrugged, and went to work de-boning the remaining gallon of soup.
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Daniel J. Hogan can use all the extra backbone he can get. Follow him on Twitter, @danieljhogan.
