At our house, there is nothing as comforting as a big pot of chicken soup. It makes everyone feel warm inside and out, and is a big booster to the immune system. This soup can be modified a thousand ways. Add star anise and fish sauce to make it Asian flavored. Give it a southwest kick with cumin and smoked paprika. It’s the base to 90 percent of my soups, and it all starts with the culinary holy trinity of onion, garlic and ginger.
Ingredients
-
1 medium yellow onion, diced
-
3 cloves garlic, minced
-
1 tbsp minced ginger
-
4 medium carrots, quartered and sliced
-
8 cups chicken broth
-
1 bay leaf
-
4 cups diced chicken cooked or uncooked
-
½ a bunch of kale, stemmed and diced
-
Salt to taste
Optional veggies
-
Broccoli
-
Mushrooms
-
Chard
-
Green cabbage
-
Bok choy
To Pho it up
-
2 Star anise
-
3 tbsp fish sauce (I like Red boat)
-
5 green onions, diced
Southwest style
-
1 tbsp smoked paprika
-
1 tsp cumin
-
1 can diced, fire roasted tomatoes
-
1 can black beans, rinsed
-
1 can corn and liquid
Directions
- In a large crock pot, sauté onion for 2 minutes
- Add, garlic, ginger and carrots on medium heat until onion is translucent.
- Add chicken stock and bay leaf.
- Bring to boil, then turn down to simmer.
- If your chicken is raw, add it now and cook 2-3 minutes until cooked.
- If chicken is cooked already, add kale, simmer for 1-2 minutes, then turn off heat.
- Then add cooked chicken.
- Salt to taste.
You can add lots of other kinds of veggies to this. I like to sauté my mushrooms before I add them, but pretty much anything else will cook quickly in the hot liquid without any extra heat, leaving it flavorful and fresh-tasting. If you don’t have a large crock pot, sauté your ingredients in a frying pan and add them to your soup pot. Experiment! Dump in your leftovers! This is a great use for veggies that may have passed their prime and are a little floppy. They will rehydrate in the water and taste great.
If you want to make this into a chicken pho, add 2 star anise flowers into the broth when you start to heat it. When ingredients are cooked, add fish sauce and green onions. Serve over rice or rice noodles. Top with chopped basil or cilantro.
For a southwest style chicken soup, add smoked paprika, cumin, a can of tomatoes, a can of black beans and a can of corn and its liquid.
If you really want to kick it up a notch, make this soup with homemade stock the day after a chicken dinner by putting the chicken bones in 10 cups of water, adding an onion, some garlic, a bay leaf and a couple carrots and cooking for about 2 hours, but there are plenty of organic chicken stocks and bone broths that will do just fine.
Enjoy!
0 Comments