Welcoming Fall with some Chicken Noodle Soup

Nothing says 'FALL' like a good soup and there is just something about eating a hearty chicken noodle soup on a cold day that I just love. When I began freezing meals and using them in rotation with my weekly dinners I began to search for a good chicken noodle soup recipe. I wanted a recipe that would be easily assembled, taste great, was thick, and could be frozen. After much searching I came across this recipe from Freezer Friendz two years ago and it has become my go to chicken noodle soup recipe. I do tweak it a bit for my own liking. If you want the original recipe click on the link above. Here we go:

Ingredients:

2 C of shredded or diced chicken 

1 can of cream of chicken soup

2 cups of chicken stock

2 cups of veggies (I eye ball it and I use celery, carrots, and onions.)

2 cups of cooked noodles

2 bay leafs

Pat of butter

Generous sprinkling of poultry seasoning

Salt and Pepper to taste

It should be noted that I pretty much eye ball this whole recipe...I'm very much a Rachel Ray type cook don't get precise unless I'm baking. This recipe doubles and triples beautifully. On this particular day I doubled my recipe. 

Start by boiling water for the noodles and chopping your veggies. I used my food processor to slice my carrots and celery and then chop my onion. Heat a deep pot with a pat of butter or two depending on the volume of veggies you need to soften at medium high heat. Add the veggies and let them begin to cook. After a few minutes add the bay leaf and the poultry seasoning. 

When your water is boiling add your pasta and again gauge it on how much soup you are producing. I will say that if you want to freeze some I would only cook noodles for what you plan to consume then. It's easier to freeze the soup base and then when you pull it out of the freezer cook noodles that particular night. So, I cooked enough for what we were going eat and didn't worry about what I was planning to freeze.

Next, add your cream of chicken soup and your chicken stock. Depending on your preferences you can add more of less stock depending on how thick/creamy you like your soup. I make my own chicken stock these days because it's cheaper but you can use store bought stock easily. At this point you can add your chicken...you can cook raw chicken in your base. I do this all the time in my chicken-n-dumplings recipe and have never had a problem. If you do this bring your soup mixture to a boil and add your chicken and then knock the heat back down. If you have precooked chicken then just lower the heat to a simmer and add your chicken. This particular time I had precooked chicken on hand from earlier in the week. Once it was warmed I did salt and pepper to taste. At this point I went ahead and pulled out what I was planning to freeze. What was left then received a generous helping of noodles. And then it was time to eat. Super easy and really tasty. We ate our soup with grilled cheese sandwiches this particular night. I've been eating the leftovers over the course of this last week. Enjoy!

Veggies sweating it out.

 Noodles cooling  off and waiting to go in the pot.

 Cream of chicken added along with the stock.

 Chicken chopped and ready to go.

 Everybody in the pot.

 Mmmmmm! So, so, so good!

 Ready for the freezer.

Freezing tips:

-I love to freeze in these Ziploc containers because they are made for the freezer, heavy duty, and washable. 

-Label everything! I like the Ziploc containers because I can write on the lid with a dry erase marker and then wipe/rub it off when I get ready to wash the container. They also have a spot for the date which comes in handy.

-For this particular recipe you could thaw it in the croc pot and then add your cooked noodles before serving. You can also add some more stock or a little milk to thin it out a bit...to help stretch it even further. 

Variations:
-Last Thanksgiving I used left over turkey and used it instead of the chicken and it was really good. I plan to do that again this year since we'll be hosting Thanksgiving for the college family and Christmas for Andy's family this year. I'm sure at some point we'll have some extra turkey that needs to be used up and this is a great way to change it up.

Week 4 of 52 in 2010...

So here's our fourth new recipe for 2010...Chicken Tortilla Soup! The original came from Food Network's website and is another Rachel Ray. For the original click here.

Ingredients

• Vegetable or corn oil, for drizzling, plus 2 tablespoons -- 2 turns of the pot in a slow stream
• Couple of handfuls of frozen corn
• 1 red bell pepper, split and seeded
• 1.5 pounds chicken breast tenders
• 1 teaspoon poultry seasoning, 1/3 palm full
• 1 teaspoon cumin, 1/3 palm full (I love cumin so I used a tad more...)
• Salt and pepper
• 1 small to medium zucchini, small dice
• 1 large yellow skinned onion, chopped (I use a food processor and chopped half and then saved the other half to do with the chipotle in adobo peppers. This gives the spice and heat without overwhelming my small child!)
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 to 2 chipotle in adobo peppers (I used one for the first time making it and it was plenty...if you like super heat add another one!)
• 3 cans fire roasted tomatoes,
• 1 can tomato sauce, 8 ounces
• 3 cups chicken stock, available in re-sealable paper containers on soup aisle
• 4 cups blue corn tortilla chips, broken up into large pieces
• 1 cup shredded cheddar or pepper Jack cheese
• 1/2 cup sour cream

Directions

Cut the bell pepper in to large pieces and place on a rimmed baking tray. Put under the broiler on low...check every so often till it's roasted to your liking. I did skin side up. Pull out and let cool. Chop all other veggies. I used a food processor for the onion, garlic, and chipotle.

Dice chicken. Add 2 tablespoons oil to hot soup pot. Add chicken to pot. Season with poultry seasoning, cumin, salt and pepper. Lightly brown chicken on each side...till it has good color to it. Add zucchini, onions and garlic and chipotle peppers. Cook vegetables with chicken 5 to 7 minutes to soften. Add tomatoes, tomato sauce and stock. Bring soup to a bubble, reduce heat to medium low.

Add frozen corn kernels and chopped roasted red bell pepper. Serve soup with scatter of shredded cheese (I used a Mexican blend), blue corn chips, and a dollop of sour cream. You can also add avocado, raw onion, cilantro, or any other garnish of your choice.

**The original calls for grilled corn on the cob and red bell pepper. However, I'm in the market for a new grill pan and so I changed it to fit my needs. I plan to do this one again later the original way.

**Also, this made a ton of soup! It fed all three of us plus gave me left overs for two more meals...which I froze for a later date.

52 New Recipes in 2010!

After watching and being inspired by Julia and Julie to cook more...coupled with my new cook book that I received for Christmas my husband suggested that one of our goals this year should be to cook one new recipe a week for the entire year. For the most part it seems pretty doable...I might tweek it a bit and do two the week before head to the west coast in March, etc. So here's last weeks story and recipe:

Due to the INSANELY cold weather we've been experiencing I've had a hankering for soup...I pulled out my new Rachel Ray cookbook and began perusing its pages for the first recipe of the year. I settled on Ribollita-Bread Soup. If you want the original check out the above link to get the book...here's my version.

2 tablespoons of EVOO

5 large cloves of garlic

1 medium onion chopped

2 carrots, peeled and chopped

2 ribs of celery chopped

1 bay leaf

Salt and Pepper (I prefer fresh ground for both)

2 cans of Navy Beans (any small white beans will do)

2 cans of diced tomatoes, drained (I prefer fire roasted!)

6 cups of chicken stock

3 cups of tomato sauce

3 cups of chewy Italian bread, torn without crusts

Parmigiano for the table

Heat a deep pot over medium high heat. Add oil, garlic, carrots, onion, celery, and bay leaf. Season with salt and pepper. Saute till veggies begin to soften. Add beans, stock, tomato sauce, and diced tomatoes. Cover pot and bring to a boil. Drop heat and let simmer till ready to serve. Place bowl of torn bread on table for people to add along with cheese. Ribollita can be as thick or as thin as you like. She says in the book that some are so thick a wooden spoon can be placed in the middle and it will stand upright!

In Rachel's recipe she calls for the bread to be added on the stove, however, I opted out of this because I'm a HUGE fan of cooking a meal and letting it do double duty. Whenever I can take half of what I make and freeze it for later I do it. I froze half of what I made and still fed Andy, AG, Jess (one of our hungry college kids), and myself. So by doing it this way I just need to buy a new loaf of bread next time we want to have soup.

Also another thing that we did, which was quite tasty, was Andy picked up a rotisserie chicken and brought it home. We took half of it and shredded it at the table into our soup. The other half I saved for the next night.