Fresh slow cooked chicken soup with cheese butter dumplings

A simple but tasty chicken soup that is easy to adjust for any ones taste.  Please note that I am writing what we used, feel free to adjust or change to make the soup the best one for you.

One Chicken – we used 4 ¼ chicken pieces – legs and thighs together.  I find the dark meat is usually more flavourful and is often the cheaper cut.

3 small onions – diced – bite size pieces

3 medium potatoes – diced – smaller then bite size pieces so they cooked quicker

5 to 6 celery stocks – diced or chopped to bite size – keep the leaf part it adds flavour to the soup. 

3 to 4 cloves of garlic – diced or chopped to bite size pieces

Salt – to taste

Pepper – to taste

Other spices – to taste.

If you are using a whole chicken you should cut it into pieces to fit into the pot. Put chicken in a pot with water and some salt.  Bring to boil, reduce heat so that there is still bubbles (pot still boiling) but there is no white foam forming.  The water will reduce – keep adding fresh water so that you develop a nice broth.  Boil until chicken is cooked.

Remove chicken – let cool then peel meat off the bones.  I know some people like to keep the skin, we did not.  It tends to add fat making the soup greasy. Cut chicken into bite size pieces.  Put into fridge until needed.

Let the broth cool down.  Skim off the layer of fat/grease that forms on the top.  Some people like the extra fat and believe it adds flavour.  I find that the soup is better if you remove the top layer of fat/grease.  There is enough in the remaining broth to add enough flavour.

Bring broth to boil.  Add potato’s, celery, onions, garlic and cut chicken.  Let boil at reduced heat (water boiling but no foam forming).  Add spices – this should be done slowly.  Don’t put lots in.  We added some pepper at this point and waited to add the other spices until the potatoes were soft.  Boil until potatoes are soft, reduce to low (simmer). 

This time we decided to make the soup spicy so we added more salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, oregano, thyme and a tinny amount of sugar.  We used some premixed spices we had in the house, which is why some sugar was added.  The beauty of this soup is that you can use the spices you have at home, the ones you like.  If you have fresh grown herbs and spices that will make a great soup, but dried or premixed will work.

We added some noodles just because the kids wanted them.  You can take spaghetti noodles and break them into small pieces or buy the smaller pre-cut noodles used for chicken noodle soup.  Again it is about what you like, and what you have in the house.

We added cheese butter dumplings, which made the meal for me.

Needed:

4 tablespoons butter

4 eggs

6 tablespoons flour

½ teaspoon salt

1/3 cup grated cheese (this can be adjusted to taste, but don’t add to much cheese)

Beat until soft the 4 tablespoons of butter.  Beat and add in the 4 eggs.  Stir in the 12 tablespoons flour and ½ teaspoon salt.  Once all mixed and smooth, add 1/3 cup grated cheese.

Drop the batter from a spoon into the simmering soup.  Put lid on and simmer the dumplings for about 8 minutes. 

Serve soup with the dumplings on the top of the bowl.  They go quickly.  You may want to make a double batch.  Once the first batch has been served put soup back onto the stove, and make more dumplings.

We made a large pot of soup.  We had enough for a family of four to have dinner and lots of leftovers.  We portioned the extra soup into single lunch sized containers.  We froze it.  When school starts we will pop the portions into the microwave in the morning and put the hot soup into the kids’ thermal containers so they can have hot fresh soup.  The kids wanted us to put dumplings in, but even after making a double batch there were none left.