Sunday, March 6, 2011

Quick and Easy Chicken Soup

Janelle's Quick and Easy Chicken Soup - made March 6, 2011 from The Devil's Food Cake Murder by Joanne Fluke (book #52)


Technically this isn't a real recipe book but rather the latest in the Hannah Swensen mysteries by Joanne Fluke where Hannah finds a dead body, solves the mystery and juggles her love life between Mike, who's a rake and Norman who's too perfect to be real except he needs to grow a pair when it comes to the women in his life.  But it does come with a variety of recipes so I consider it fair game for my baking challenge.  While I wasn't captivated by the storyline (it was the usual formula and I'm getting tired of the Hannah/Mike/Norman love triangle), I did find several recipes I wanted to try from it.

Given the title of the book, you'd think I'd make the Devil's Food Cake recipe first.  All in good time.  This chicken soup recipe looked so easy that I figured it was just my speed.  Like Sandra Lee's semi-homemade cooking, this is just opening cans and boiling stuff together.  I can do that.  Plus on still-chilly March evenings, nothing beats a bowl of hot soup.

What I liked best about this recipe is it doesn't have a lot of "stuff" in it.  Meaning, as a carnivore, I appreciated that it's just noodles, chicken and soup.  I even left off the parsley but mostly because I didn't have any on hand.  I don't have the most discerning taste buds when it comes to "real food" so I thought this was just fine.  The soup part was a bit creamy, more like a chowder consistency than a clear soup. Some of you with fancier palates might like to add some peas, carrots, onions and other stuff.  The only thing I would do differently next time is make half the recipe.  This is going to keep me in soup for at least a couple of weeks.

ETA: once the soup had cooled down, the liquid thickened from the consistency of clam chowder to more like a creamy pasta sauce.  As in, it wasn't really soup any longer or even soupy pasta.  If you want this to remain soup, I'd advise cutting back the amount of pasta by at least a third to half or increasing the amount of chicken broth.

8 cups chicken broth or 2 quarts water (8 cups) and 8 chicken bouillon cubes
6 ½ cups uncooked wide egg noodles
2 cans (10 ¾ ounces each) condensed cream of chicken soup, undiluted
3 cups cubed cooked chicken
1 cup (8 ounces) sour cream
Minced fresh parsley

1.    Bring broth or water and bouillon to a boil in a large pot.
2.    Add the noodles and cook, stirring occasionally, until the noodles are tender.  Do not drain the noodles.
3.    Lower the heat to medium and add the two cans of condensed cream of chicken soup.  Stir well.
4.    Add the cubed chicken and stir.
5.    Heat everything through, 5 to 10 minutes.  When the soup is hot, remove it from the heat.  Stir in the sour cream, sprinkle with fresh parsley and ladle into soup bowls.  Serve immediately.

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