Chicken Noodle Soup

Chicken noodle soup isn't something that I was taught how to make. I just started making it and adjusting it over time. And eventually I started using real ingredients instead of powdered ingredients. Every time I make chicken noodle soup, the recipe probably varies. Everything I put in is pretty much "to taste", so the recipe that I include below isn't really a recipe. Use it as a guideline.

You can use any chicken for this; I generally use boneless chicken breast. Using chicken still on the bone will provide more flavor. I also tend to add way too many noodles. The noodles absorb liquid after the package recommended boiling time, so keep that in mind. You can also use chicken broth instead of bouillon. And you can easily adjust the recipe to make a smaller amount!

Chicken Noodle Soup
10 C water + bouillon to make it into chicken broth
Salt & pepper "to taste"
1/2 to 1 pound chicken breast
1/2 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 C carrots, sliced
1 C celery, sliced
1 1/2 C noodles (I used stars!)

Boil the chicken in the water/broth. Add the salt and pepper.

While the chicken is boiling, chop up the onion and garlic. Add it to the boiling water.

Slice up the carrots and celery. Add these to the boiling broth.

When the chicken is cooked all the way, pull it out of the broth.. Shred the chicken and then return it to the pot. I usually shred the chicken using two forks.

Add the noodles. Let boil for the recommended amount of time. Reduce the soup to a simmer. Let simmer for a while.

Enjoy!

Chicken & Rice Soup

Now that I've survived grading nearly 100 exams plus homeworks during the first exam week of the semester, I can get back to cooking and baking. I'm lucky that my phone has a super awesome camera or there would be no pictures. Technology isn't always my friend, but everything is working out fine so far.

Today was the first day of fall, so I wanted what I made to reflect that in some way. It was a rainy, cloudy, and cool day: a perfect day for soup. I've recently discovered that I enjoy chicken and wild rice soup, so I attempted to make some. I looked for a recipe online, but ended up combining bits and pieces of different recipes into my own version. It is essentially just chicken noodle soup with rice instead of  noodles. This makes a lot of soup, so feel free to cut the recipe in half!

The only problem I had with making this soup had to do with the rice. First, I had no idea they only sold itty-bitty boxes of wild rice and that each box was $5. I discovered this lovely fact at the grocery store. I decided to buy brown rice instead. And... then I burned the brown rice because I forgot to turn down the heat. I finally gave up and used minute rice.

Chicken & Rice Soup
6 C chicken broth
2 chicken breasts (more or less depending on how much meat you want)
1 C carrots, sliced
2 stalks celery, chopped
1/2 an onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
3 T butter
1 C long grain rice, uncooked
Salt & pepper to taste

When you cook the rice depends on what type of rice you are using. Cook the rice according to package directions and add to the chicken broth after everything else.

Boil the chicken breasts in the chicken broth until fully cooked. The length of time will vary depending on if the chicken has bone in or not.

Meanwhile, cut up the carrots, celery, onion, and garlic.

Melt the butter in a pan and saute the carrots, celery, onion, and garlic until the onion is tender. This will take about 10 minutes.

When the chicken is fully cooked, remove it from the chicken broth and cut or pull it to pieces. Return the pieces of chicken to the broth.

When the onion is tender from being sauteed, and the chicken is fully cooked and pulled apart, add the veggies to the chicken broth as well.

Add the fully cooked rice. Bring the soup to a low simmer to continue cooking the carrots. As you can see, I added way too much rice to my soup (1.5 cups instead of 1). It is more of a casserole now, but still delicious!

Eat while warm and enjoy!

Cream of Potato-Celery Soup

I didn't expect this soup to turn out to be so wonderful. My low expectations were partly due to how non-perfect the tomato soup turned out and partly due to the fact that I only recently discovered how awesome potato soup is. If these recipes continue to make delcious foods, I am going to be making everything from scratch instead of buying premade foods.

This soup is not for people who don't like celery (or are allergic to it!). The celery definitely provides a distinct flavor. I'm not sure how much the chicken bouillon alters the flavor, so if you are a vegetarian you can possibly just leave it out. Or, if you don't want to use the bouillon cube for other reasons, you can substitute one of the two cups of water with chicken broth.

Two medium sized potatoes were enough to get the two cups of cubed potato pieces. The celery leaves can be found on the inside of a bundle of celery stalks or on top if they aren't removed before the store obtains them. I really don't know if those add flavor, so you can possibly leave them out and add a bit more celery if you are silly and buy precut celery.

Cream of Potato-Celery Soup (Printer-friendly PDF Version)
2 C peeled, raw, cubed potatoes
1 C thinly sliced celery
2 T chopped celery leaves
2 T minced onion
2 C water
1/2 t salt
1 C scalded milk
1 T margarine/butter
2 T flour
1/4 C cold milk
1 chicken bouillon cube
salt and pepper to taste

Chop up the potatoes, slice the celery, chop the leaves, and mince the onion. Throw all of this into a nice sized pot with the water and salt.

Bring the contents of the pot to a boil. Place a cover on the pot, reduce the heat, and simmer for 25ish minutes.

After this pot contents boil for the 25ish minutes, start to scald the milk. While the milk was scalding, I smashed a lot of the potatoes against the inside of the pot with a wooden spoon. I didn't want the soup to be very chunky! You can do this or not. You are the one who will be eating it.

Pour the scalded milk into the pot with the potatoes. Add the butter or margine as well. Mix this all up.

Meanwhile, add the flour to the cold milk. Stir well. If the flour leaves some lumps in the milk, you may end up with mini dumpling type things in your soup. Pour this thickened milk into the pot of potato soup. Stir in well and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring frequently. This will thicken the soup. Add the salt, pepper, and bouillon cube at this point.

Serve the soup while hot. Eat with a spoon. Or drink with a thick straw. I guess you can also pour some into a mug and just drink it that way. I won't restrict your soup eating options.

I made a double batch of this soup. Two days later, it heats up and is still very yummy.

Enjoy!

Clear Tomato Soup

I'm going to start expanding my recipe range to include non-desserts and non-baked goods. Most of these types of recipes in the old cookbooks seem complex and not tasty. Fortunately for me, this clear tomato soup was easy to make and tasted pretty good. However, it was not clear. I'm guessing the title is to distinguish it from creamy tomato soup.

There are some homemade style tomato soups that are good, and then there are the homemade tomato soups that taste like pasta sauce. If I wanted to consume straight pasta sauce, I'd just open a jar and start drinking. This tomato soup is nothing like pasta sauce: it is a bit sweet and the clove is a bit strong. I'm going to play with the recipe in the future. I'll start by decreasing the amount of clove added and the amount of sugar added.

Clear Tomato Soup (Printer-friendly PDF Version)
1 1/2 quarts fresh tomatoes (2.5lbs)
1 small bay leaf
1/4 C chopped onion
4 cloves (1 t ground clove)
1 T butter
1 T flour
1 t sugar
1 t salt
Pepper to taste

Cut up the tomatoes and place them in a pot. Add the bay leaf, onion, and cloves.

Boil this together for 20 to 25 minutes, stirring occasionally. Some people may complain about the smell of clove during the boiling process. Just ignore them, the clove smells good.

Press the soupy tomato mixture through a sieve into another pot or bowl.

Discard the skins and onion that don't go through the tiny holes. I ran the tomatoes through the sieve twice to make sure all the seeds were removed.

Rinse out the original pot you were using. Melt the butter in this pot over low heat. Stir in the sugar and flour. It will make a thick paste. Slowly add approximately 1/4 C of the strained (sieved?) tomato and stir until smooth. Heat this for a few minutes.

Slowly stir in the remaining tomato liquid. Constantly stir for 5 minutes over low heat.

Pour some into a bowl and enjoy! This soup would go great with french bread if you have any handy.