Cream of Chicken Soup

This weekend I was feeling slightly other the weather. Whenever I’m sick, I make myself a big ‘ole pot of my mom’s chicken soup. The problem with making a big ‘ole pot of soup is that I’m not big on leftovers. Because I only eat chicken soup when I’m sick, I don’t want to eat it any other time. After having one bowl, I decided to convert the soup into a creamy soup.

The only thing I would have changed would have been to add more veggies (to make the soup a bit thicker), chicken and dumplings. Though creamy in taste, this soup was very thin. I like my cream soups to be slightly thickened.

ingredients.

• 1 whole chicken
• 6 T. bouillon granules
• 1 tsp. whole allspice
• 1 tsp. whole black peppercorns
• 1/2 tsp. thyme
• 1/2 tsp. marjoram
• 1/4 tsp. rosemary
• 1 onion, chopped
• 4 celery stalks, washed and sliced
• 4 carrots, peeled and sliced
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 c. heavy cream
• dumplings

directions.

1. Put chicken in a large soup pot and cover with water. Bring water to a boil and skim the “scum” off. Turn heat down to low and cook for an hour.
2. Add the onion, carrots and celery. Add the bay leaves and seasonings (put all seasoning into a tea infusior and stick the tea infusior in the pot) and cook over low heat for one or two more hours. The chicken should be about falling off the bone by this point.
3. Remove the chicken and let cool.
4. Pour the soup through a strainer to collect all the veggies. Puree the veggies with a little bit of soup broth in a blender or food processor. Return to the soup pot.
5. Prepare the dumpling batter. Turn the heat to high and drop dumplings directly into soup. Allow the dumplings to cook for two or three minutes and remove from the broth.
6. When chicken is cool enough to handle, remove from the bones and shred the meat. Add chicken to the broth.
7. Allow the soup to cool slightly before adding the heavy cream – you don’t want the cream to curdle from the heat of the broth. Do not boil again once adding the heavy cream.
8. Freeze any leftover soup for a rainy day.

Instead of using a whole chicken, I used leg quarters because they were on sale. I like dark meat in soup because it turns out more tender than white meat – in my opinion, anyway.

Recipe rating: 