Lidia Bastianich turns roast chicken into comforting stracciatella

Italian cooking icon Lidia Bastianich is visiting the TODAY kitchen to share a couple of her go-to comforting chicken recipes for chilly winter evenings. She shows us how to make whole-roasted chicken with lemons and then use the bones to make stock for straciatella, a favorite soup of her childhood.

Lemon Roasted Chicken by Lidia Bastianich

Roasted chicken is one of my favorite dishes and it is easy to make. Chicken is also one of my favorite proteins. I grew up with chickens on my grandmother's farm and loved going to get the eggs. We used every part of the chicken, but a whole-roasted chicken was always for a special occasion.

Stracciatella (Roman 'Egg Drop' Soup) by Lidia Bastianich

My grandmother would often make this soup for me. Sometimes she just did it with whisked eggs and sometimes she added spinach. We had plenty of chickens running around, and egg was the perfect source of protein. I loved feeding the chickens and it was my duty every morning to go and collect the eggs from the chicken coop, sometimes they were still warm.

If you like those comforting recipes, you should also try these:

Lidia Bastianich's Chicken Scaloppini by Lidia Bastianich

Chicken Cacciatore by Lidia Bastianich

This article was originally published on TODAY.com