Chicken Pot Pie Soup

As my skin and sinuses can attest, winter is definitely upon us!  However, the weather is actually pretty nice right now!  Back when I made this soup, it was realllllly cold out and boy, did it hit the spot!  It gives you the yummy taste of chicken pot pie, but without the hassle. You can literally throw this together and be ready to eat in less than 1/2 hr!  Take THAT, Rachael Ray!

You will need:

1 1/2 Lbs. Boneless Skinless Chicken Thighs
1/2 Stick REAL Butter
2 Cloves Garlic
2 Carrots (approx 1C baby carrots)
2 Stalks Celery
2 Small Potatoes
1 Onion
1C Cream
4C Chicken Stock (I only had Turkey Stock and Chicken Bone Broth and they worked fine)
1/4C Flour
1/2t Curry Powder
1/2t Oregano
1/2t Thyme
Pinch of Tarragon
Pinch of Dill
Salt and Pepper to taste

Start by setting a pot of water to boil.  Add chicken and cook until done.

When done, remove chicken to cool, then dice into bite-sized pieces.

 While that's cooking, chop up all of your veggies.

Melt your butter in your pot and add all veggies except for the garlic.

If you add it now, it's likely to burn. Cook over medium heat until

your carrots, onion and celery are soft.

Now you can add in your garlic and spices.  Stir. Cook for 2 or 3 minutes.

Add your 1/4C flour now.

Stir well to coat the flour with the butter that is in the pan.  Cook for a few minutes to get the raw taste out of the flour.

 Add in your chicken stock.

Add in diced chicken.  At this point, you will have something like this.  Bring to just shy of a boil.  You don't really need to let it cook for long unless you need more time for your potatoes to soften.

Remove from heat and add in your cream.

Salt and pepper to taste.  Ladle into a bowl and enjoy!

Notes:

This nourishing soup was so tasty, so rich, so yummmmmy!  I'm craving it right now!  It really did taste like chicken pot pie!  The only thing I might do different next time is to use some arrowroot or xantham gum to thicken as the soup wasn't quite as thick as I would have liked.  Another option is to add peas and/or mushrooms, but that just didn't sound good to me at the time.  I don't like mushy peas. I'm weird like that.  If you don't spend $7 on the chicken thighs like my husband did!*@#*!!, it's actually very economical.
Recipe adapted from The Frickin Chicken.

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Cream of {anything} Soup

Today I'm going to show you how to make your own Cream Soup Base.  You can turn this into any type of cream soup you want (cream of celery, mushroom, onion, etc...)  Here's what you'll need:

Ingredients:
2T Butter or Fat from homemade broth/stock
2T Onions, optional
2T Flour, heaping
1 1/2C Chicken Broth/Stock
1 1/2C Milk
1/2t Poultry Seasoning
1/4t Onion Powder
1/4t Garlic Powder
1/8t Black Pepper
1/4t Salt (optional.  I omitted)
1/4t Parsley
1/8t Paprika
Helpful Hint: Measure all spices (except salt) out in a little ramekin ahead of time.

I used some fat from the top of some frozen chicken stock.  I scraped

it with a spoon until I got about 2T.  You can just use 2T butter if you want.

Since I didn't want a bunch of fat floating in the soup base, I scraped

the rest off and put it in a container to keep in the freezer for future use.

Plop that in your pan.  I swear, there is nothing like the smell of

the fat from really good homemade stock.  It's so rich and fragrant!

Add in a couple of tablespoons of diced onion.  This is optional.

I just thought it would give a good browned onion taste to it.

Stir until golden brown, about 5 minutes

Add in 2 heaping tablespoons flour.  Sprinkle it evenly over the fat.

Mix well.  This is called a roux.  Bad pic, sorry.

Make the mistake of adding another T of flour and end up with

this clump that you have to add some stock to, to thin it out.

You want to basically cook the flour to a golden color.  If you don't

do this, you'll have a real raw flour-y taste that is unappealing.  This

color here is just right.  Some of that is due to the caramelized onions.

Add in your chicken stock a little at a time.   I do this so it doesn't

end up with a bunch of clumps and stock that I have to incorporate.

It will eventually come together, but I find that more difficult.  

This is what your base should look like now.

Bring to a boil, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom of the pan.

At this point, you essentially have chicken gravy!  Save half now if

you think you'll need some gravy tonight!  If not, let's move on...

Since I have a nice smooth texture to my 'gravy', I have no problem

pouring in all of my milk at once.  If it was lumpy, I'd do this in small batches.

It will be thin and watery at this point.  That's okay.  Stir well.

Add your spices (without the salt) to the sauce now.

Stir to incorporate.  Looks like cream soup, huh?!  Give it a taste.
Need some salt?  You can add some now, but I caution you...
sometimes the recipes we use have a lot of salt in other products. 
You can always add some later.  I didn't add any at this time.

Bring to a gentle boil again, scraping pan bottom all the while.

Use what you need now in a recipe, or store some in a baggie.

Label baggies first, then fill and lie down flat in the freezer.

This makes about 3C, which is two soup cans worth.

Notes:

I used this soup base to make some Tuna Casserole last night.  This is the BEST cream of anything soup I've ever tasted!  Especially if you use homemade stock.  There really is no comparison, and it's soooo easy! 

I wanted this soup to be a 'cover all bases' soup, so I didn't add anything like mushrooms or celery to flavor it.  If you wanted to make a cream of 'vegetable' soup, you'd just add your mushrooms/celery/onions/broccoli in at the beginning with the fat and saute a bit.  You may need more fat depending on how many veggies you use.

My estimate for the cost of this whole double batch is 36 1/2 CENTS!  That's 18 cents for a 'can' of soup!

I'm using 10c for a teaspoon of spice, 5c for 1/2t, 2.5c per 1/4t, 1.2c per 1/8t.

While not exact, I think I'm actually on the high side since I buy almost all of my spices for 99c per container.

That just amazes me!  

And it's so much better than the store-bought!  You can control the salt, too.  Store-bought ones are just filled with (way too much) sodium!

Click HERE to learn how to make broth/stock.  

Click HERE to learn how to do a small dice on an onion. 

Click HERE for Tuna Casserole Recipe. 

Recipe courtesy of Tammy's Recipes.

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Homemade Broth

After making boneless ribs the other night, I decided to make good use of my rib water. I just couldn't dump it down the drain! Here's what I did...

You see this stinky water left over from par-boiling my ribs?

 And these useless vegetable ends from when I made potato salad?

Throw them in a pot together and turn on high. 

I snapped a few pieces of the runt garlic 

in half to add more flavor.  (You know those tiny
little inside pieces that are too small to grate/chop?)

After about an hour or two, it will look like so...

Take a sieve and position it over a bowl.

Line that sieve with a paper towel to catch all the small bits.

Pour your broth, veggies and all,  into the paper towel.

When it drains (a few seconds), you will end up with this.
Discard these veggie bits.  They've served their purpose
in this world as far as I'm concerned. They were destined for
the trash can prior to this.  If you're die hard, maybe you could wash
the fat off and throw them in a compost pile...who knows.

Remove your sieve and look at the gorgeous broth you have!

I know...it looks like urine.  Try to ignore that.  Or take it to
your next doctor's appt and see what they diagnose you with!

Pour into freezable containers with some head space, wishing

you had used all of the pork water and not just two thirds!
Obsess over this for about an hour, then move on with your life.

Label and date and throw in the freezer.

I hate to admit that the pork water smelled really gross as it was boiling with the ribs in it, but it did.  There's just something weird about pork that way.  When I decided to make the broth, I thought I was wasting my time because there was no way my nose could handle putting that in something.  I just knew I'd be able to smell that funky pork smell.

But after it boiled for a couple of hours, it smelled so good in the house!  I was extremely surprised to find that it smells just like some really good chicken stock, and I didn't even have any bones to make it into stock!

I'm really glad I went with my new frugal gut and just couldn't throw it away.  You'll be surprised what you can make if you just think before your throw something out!  This broth would have cost about $3 at the store!  Mine was free!  Yippee!

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