Homemade Chicken Soup

I've been really into making soups and stews lately, probably because I was sick for a while and it's finally getting colder out. After making my own chicken soup from scratch and realizing how easy it is, I am never going back to anything else. Growing up on Campbell's soup and finally making the same thing but having it taste at least 10x better is always a great feeling.


Homemade Chicken Soup
(slightly adapted from Behind The Skillet)

• 5 cups chicken broth or stock
• 1 cup water
• 1 large onion, coarsely chopped
• 2 carrots, peeled and chopped
• 2 stalks celery, chopped
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley (I used about 1 1/2 Tbsp dried parsley)
• 2 large cloves garlic, peeled and crushed (or 1 Tbsp pre-diced garlic)
• 1 cup pulled/shredded Chicken breast
• 1 Tbs olive oil 
• 1/2 cup finely diced carrot (about 1 carrot)
• 1/2 cup finely diced leek (about 1 small leek)
• 1/2 tsp dried thyme
• 2 to 2 1/2 cups cooked pasta (I used linguine broken into fourths, but you can use whatever you want)
• salt
• pepper

Place the Broth, water, onion, 2 carrots, celery root, parsley and garlic in soup pot. Season with salt if needed (it really just depends on your broth). Cover and bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium and simmer for around 30 or 40 minutes.
Drain through a fine sieve and/or cheesecloth (reserving broth and straining out all the veggies and sediment). Place the pulled chicken in the broth and cover and set aside.

In your soup pot, heat olive oil then add the diced carrot and leek, thyme and pinch or so of black pepper. Saute for around 10 minutes or until the veggies get nice and soft and leeks are just starting to brown/caramelize.

Add half of the broth, cover and gently simmer for around 10 minutes. Add the rest of the stock, pulled chicken and cooked pasta. Taste and season with salt and pepper as necessary, then gently simmer for a few more minutes (don't let it cook too long, or sit for a long time after cooking, as the pasta tends to just soak up all that broth).

Chicken & Dumplings

Chicken and dumplings is one of my absolute favorite meals. Especially because it's like chicken pot pie without the pie crust (and if you know me, you know I'm not a huge fan of pie crust unless it's made from cookies or graham crackers). Plus it's super easy to make, warms you up on cold days, and you almost always have all the ingredients in your pantry.

I had a rotisserie chicken I needed to get rid of and I'd never actually made it myself before, but I thought it tasted pretty delicious, so I'd call it a success.

It should be noted that I used a combination of a recipe found online (via Feast Ur Eyes) and my knowledge of watching my father make this on occasion to write up this exact recipe. Coincidentally, I didn't have some of the ingredients so I improvised. Here are my changes:

• no celery or peas
• 4 sage leaves instead of bay leaves
• shredded rotisserie chicken instead of making my own
• one carrot because it was absolutely enormous

but if you do have the correct ingredients, either way is fine, obviously (also, if you don't have heavy cream, you can just use milk, whipping cream, light cream, etc). I don't have any pans with lids, nor do I own a dutch oven, so I used the deepest pan we had and used my cutting board as a lid, which worked fine, except I should have added more broth. The dumplings sucked so much of the broth up while cooking that there wasn't very much left and a lot of chicken ended up stuck to the bottom of the pan.

The dumplings turned out HUGE, but that's what I get for eyeballing the size and trying to fit all of them into my tiny, too shallow pan.

Chicken & Dumplings

• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 2 carrots, diced
• 2 stalks celery, diced
• 1/4 tsp thyme
• salt
• pepper
• 2 bay leaves
• 4 cups chicken broth (1 cup reserved)
• 1/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1 cup frozen peas, thawed
• 2 cups cooked chicken, shredded 

For the dumplings:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/3 cups heavy cream
• 1 Tbsp dried parsley (can be substituted with rosemary, thyme, basil, etc)

Heat 1 Tbsp olive oil in large dutch oven (or a deep pan with a lid) over medium heat. Sauté onion until softened, about 2 minutes. Add carrots, celery, salt, pepper, thyme, and bay leaves. Sauté until vegetables are softened, about 5 minutes. Add 3 cups chicken broth, scraping any brown bits off the bottom of the pan. Add in most of the chicken and the peas. In a separate bowl, heat 1 cup chicken stock and slowly whisk in 1/4 cup flour (use a sieve to pour mixture into the soup if it is lumpy). Bring soup up to a boil and reduce to simmer, uncovered, about 10 minutes, or until broth is thickened. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Stir flour, baking powder, parsley, and salt in large bowl. Stir in cream until incorporated (dough will be very thick).

Discard bay leaves and return stew to rapid simmer. Add reserved chicken to stew along with any accumulated juices. Using 2 large soup spoons, a small ice cream scoop, or your hands, drop golf ball-sized dumplings onto stew about 1/4 inch apart (you should have 16 to 18 dumplings). Reduce heat to low, cover, and cook until dumplings have doubled in size (or until a toothpick inserted into them comes out clean), 15 to 18 minutes. Serve.