As I mentioned in the previous post, this recipe has always been a favorite of my family during the winter flu season! It’s not a difficult recipe to make, and it’s the ultimate comfort food!
Start by cooking chicken in a big pot. I used boneless, skinless, chicken breasts to make it easier, but you can certainly cook it with the bone and pick it off later. This is a good time to cook all the chicken you will need for the week. I cooked the chicken I will need for tomorrow night’s dinner: double-cheese spinach chicken pizza. Sorry for the gross picture. Chicken just doesn’t look that pretty while boiling.
Okay. While the chicken is cooking, you will need to prepare the other ingredients.
You can either toss chopped onions (about 1/2 cup) straight into the pot along with minced garlic (3 cloves), or you can do what I did today and saute it first.
After sauteing, it will look like this:
When you saute the onions and garlic together, you 1) get to use your new garlic press (hehe) and 2) add a more robust, “feels-like-fall” flavor to the soup. You can do it either way.
Next, cut up about a cup of carrots. I like to use baby carrots because they make cute little discs when you cut them. But you can certainly use big carrots too.
Pull out the chicken (leave the broth simmering) and cube it or shred it with a fork. Today I used about two cups of chicken and saved about a cup for the pizza tomorrow night.
Throw the cubed chicken back in the pot and add the onion, garlic, and carrots. Oh, I usually add celery too, but Hubby doesn’t like it, so I left it out this time.
Add a little salt and a few shakes of pepper.
Add chicken bouillon to taste. I think I added a few teaspoons today, but you may need more depending on how much flavor your onions and garlic add.
Feel free to add other spices and things at this point too. If I had had a bay leaf, I would have tossed that in at this point (or maybe with the chicken while it was cooking).
Let the soup simmer for a few hours. A little bit before serving, add about 1/2 cup of rice. (Trust me, you’ll want to add more, but don’t overdo it!) We also like to make this with egg noodles (yum!), but since I had rice on hand I thought I’d use it as much as possible this week.
Serve warm (but don’t burn your tongue!) with hot rolls. If you didn’t saute the onions and garlic, your soup will probably have a lighter color than this.
Enjoy!
