Chicken Potato Soup - Round 1

It's sometimes hard to come up with different ideas for soup from your head. Sometimes though, I all of a sudden have ideas and make do with what I have in the pantry (as it is most of the time in our kitchen). 

I have been adding many different types of soups since its the season for it. This is one of the last ones as Winter is coming to a close and I wanted to share something that is hearty yet rather good for you (with the exception of adding some cheese and sour cream....I know...bad).

Ingredients:

2 large chicken breasts
1 tsp olive oil
3 celery stalks
1 cup carrots
4 small onions (or 1 medium onion)
1 16 oz chicken broth
 2 large potatoes
1 16 oz vegetable broth
1 tsp poultry seasoning
1 tbsp paprika
2 tbsp herb of provence
1 dash of  sea salt
1 tsp ground pepper

First, start by dicing the chicken. Notice that I have the chicken in cubes. This will yield alot of chicken for this soup.

After you have diced the chicken start by adding olive oil to the pot. Once the oil has been fairly heated, add the chicken to the pot.

While that is cooking in the pot, start to dice the veggies and place off to the side.

 

Check to make sure the chicken is cooked thru. Take the chicken out of the pot. Add the veggies to the pot. Notice that you might need to add a teaspoon of olive oil.

Cook the vegetables until it starts to get somewhat soft and translucent. Add the garlic. Stir the vegetables. Add some chicken broth.

Start to deglaze the pot scraping the pot all of the chicken drippings and the cooking vegetables. Make sure you get all of the drippings. Notice that the stock has turned a little brown. That is ok, unless you are purist and want to have a creamy white soup. That recipe will be for another time.

 

Add the rest of the chicken broth. Allow to cook for at least 10 minutes. While that is cooking, dice the potatoes. For this recipe, I am not adding the skin. Make sure you peel and dice the potatoes. Add to the pot.

Increase the heat to the pot. Add another amount of broth. For this go around, I am adding vegetable broth. Stir in the broth and bring up the mixture to a boil.

While the vegetables are cooking, start to add the spices. I am only adding a dash of salt. As the broth has enough sodium, I am really watching what I add to the soup in regards to salt intake.

 

Continue to cook the mixture until the potatoes are fork tender. Take off the heat.

Puree the mixture a little at a time. Remember that this will be a hot. You need to vent the mixture while this is pureeing in the blender. If you don't, you will notice that the mixture will blow all over the place.

 

Once everything is completely pureed, take the pot back to the stove. Bring the heat back up and add the chicken to the soup.

 
As can be noticed, this was cooked much earlier. I have reheated the soup and added some spinach to the soup. Since I thawed this from the freezer, I also added some more chicken broth to the soup. Continue to cook this until you get the spinach limp. This is a great way to add some greens to the soup other than the celery. You can add cheese and sour cream if you like.