Look! I am back to work here at the blog even earlier than I expected! I am enjoying a two-week stint back at home in Seattle before Coco and I hit the last couple weeks of filming the first season of her show.
So what better way to start settling into my normal life than to hit the kitchen? I spent a lot of time this last weekend cooking and baking and it was amazing. I have missed it, although I have to admit it’s a bit like getting a rusty wheel turning again!
**Side note! That is not cheese on top of the soup! I garnished it with chives and julienned yellow rose petals- when I went to edit the pictures, I went “oh no!” looks like cheddar cheese…
I made this soup on instastories over the weekend and a ton of you have been asking for the recipe, so here we go!!
As little as I have been cooking up in Canada, this soup has still been a staple, and I make it a couple of times a month. I love how easy it is and VERY full of flavor and totally versatile. What I have below is what I think of as the base. It’s delicious, healthy and low-carb on it’s own, and is also Paleo and Whole30 friendly, but you can add so many different things to bulk it up depending on who is eating it.
I will often cook a pot of rice or gluten-free pasta and scoop a cup of the pre-cooked long-grain white rice or GF penne into the soup so that they have more carbs. If I am going the carby route, then I like chunks of sweet potatoes, Yukon golds or even butternut or pumpkin added in. I will also top it with chunks of avocado!
This is the kind of soup that you can make on a Sunday as meal prep for the week and eat for several days for lunch, and it kind of just gets better each day. I also mention in the recipe that I will shred the whole chicken, and take part of the meat and save it for salads or other dishes to make things easy for myself.
I am continuing to take suggestions about what else you would like to see here, just let me know in the comments!
- 1 whole chicken
- 1 large yellow onion, quartered
- 4 cloves garlic
- 1 pound tomatoes (any variety are ok!)
- 2-3 bay leaves
- 2 sprigs fresh thyme
- 8 cups chicken broth
- ¼ cup olive oil
- 1 large yellow onion, diced
- 4 large celery stalks, diced
- 4 large carrots, peeled and diced
- Kosher salt
- Optional:
- 1 cup white wine
- Peeled and diced potatoes or sweet potatoes
- Peeled and diced butternut squash
- Rice
- Pasta
- In a large pot over high heat, combine the whole raw chicken, quartered onion, garlic cloves, tomatoes, bay leaves and thyme sprigs.
- Add the chicken broth and bring to a simmer. Add a lid and turn the heat to low, simmering for at least an hour and up to several hours. I like to cook it a long time to get the most possible collagen out of the chicken bones and cartilage!
- Turn the heat off and carefully transfer the whole cooked chicken, bay leaves and thyme sprigs to a separate bowl to cool.
- Meanwhile, working in batches, blend the soup in a blender until you have a smooth broth and have pureed the onions and tomato. Store in a separate bowl while you saute the vegetables.
- In the same soup pot over medium high heat add the olive oil and the diced onion, celery and carrots. (If you are adding potatoes, squash or rice, you would add them at this point.) Stir often as the vegetables cook until they are soft and slightly golden. If you want to add the wine, this is when you would add it, stirring until you have scraped all of the browned bits from the bottom of the pan.
- Pour the pureed broth back into the pot and turn the heat to low.
- While the soup comes back up to temperature, you want to shred the chicken and add it to the soup. I dispose of the skin, fat and bones (as well as the bay leaves and thyme sprigs) and shred all of the remaining chicken meat into bite sized pieces. *This creates a very chicken heavy soup- if you want less protein in the soup, then shred the chicken and store part of it in a Tupperware in the fridge to be used in salad, pasta or for something else.
- When the soup is well combined and hot, you want to season with kosher salt to taste and then serve hot.
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Very good idea ! i will make it myself for my wife.