Name: Cock-a-Leekie
Yield: Makes 10 Portions
Cuisine: British
Ingredients: 25 ml (1 fl oz) good oil; 4 medium white onions, chopped; 2 celery sticks, chopped; 250 g (9 oz) leeks, chopped; 1 bay leaf; 1 small chicken; Salt and black pepper; 1 bunch of flat-leaf parsley, shredded; 10 dried prunes, cut into strips; 85 g (3 oz) long grain rice, cooked; 4 sprigs of thyme

Preparation info

Makes
10
Portions

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Gary Maclean's Scottish Kitchen

By Gary Maclean

Published 2022

About

When I was a young chef, cock-a-leekie was always a bit of a puzzle for me: the only time I ever saw it was at our Hogmanay or Burns Night banquets. The reason it was a puzzle was that I couldn’t understand why we would add prunes to a perfectly nice chicken broth! This recipe is my version of cock-a-leekie – one I remember from my early days as a chef.

This broth has been made in Scotland for hundreds of years. It probably originated in France and changed to fit with what was avail