Comforting Chicken Soup

Its cold season and that means its also chicken soup season!  For many of us with the current state of the economy it also means its time to budget and pinch our pennies.  This recipe will show you how to make a mouth-watering bowl of chicken noodle soup that will give you at least 10 servings for about $3.50 (that's about 35-cents a serving!).

The first thing I'm going to talk about however, is saving your vegetable scraps!  This is so important.  Anytime you make a salad, or use fresh veggies for ANY recipe, save the bits and pieces you would normally throw away - like celery root, carrot tops, tomato tops (the part that attaches to the vine), peelings, etc.  Save them in a baggie in the freezer, and then you have a perfect base for your soups!!

Comforting Chicken Soup

Ingredients:

~Vegetable scraps (about 2-3 cups) (free from the freezer)
~2 chicken thighs (about $1)
~1 can carrots (50-cents for store brand)
~1 can green beans (50-cents for store brand)
~1 pkg rotini noodles (about $1)
~2-3 potatoes, washed and cubed with peels on (about 50-cents)
~Water
~Spices (oregano, thyme, parsley, garlic or onion powder, salt, pepper to taste)

Directions:

~Fill a pot with vegetable scraps and water.  Boil about 15-20 minutes or until you have a nice broth. Gently scoop out vegetable pieces and toss, reserving broth in the pot.
~In broth, add spices to taste.
~Put chicken thighs in the water and boil about 15-20 minutes or until cooked through. Remove chicken to a cutting board, reserving broth in pot.
~Put potato cubes in the broth, and boil until soft - about 15 min.
~While potatoes are boiling, debone and shred chicken
~After potatoes have been cooked, add in noodles, carrots and green beans.  Cook an additional 10 minutes or so, until noodles are done.
~Add in chicken. 
~taste and reseason if needed.

*NOTE: You may need to add water throughout the cooking process.  This will not overly-dilute the taste, but will add volume to your soup, so don't be afraid to add more water!

This can be served up with some delicious garlic bread or a side salad as well!  My grandmother loves to eat this with cheese toast. Yum!

Comments

[Juli]

Thanks Kristen, this is great...I will definately be giving this a try.

[SierraMoon]

it looks yummy :)
couldn't come up with a decent picture today but can't wait to see everybody's kitchen poetry tomorrow !

[Erik]

I love simple recipes like this; it makes it so easy to switch some of the ingredients based on what you happen to have in the kitchen at the time. That's real cooking!
Nice post!

[Catrina]

That looks soooo tasty!!!

Oh, and I've just passed on the Kreative Blogger Award to you! :) Congrats! :) I love your stuff and am always checking in here!
See here for more info on the award:
http://thespasticcat.blogspot.com/2008/11/woot-kreative-blogger-award.html

[Tine]

I made something similar to this last night after reading your post! Thanks for the inspiration :-) I had already made the broth, I boil a chicken and use it for making dinner 3 nights. The first night I make chicken a'la king (or similar), the next night I cook something like egg-rolls or chicken burritos and the 3rd night we have soup. No chicken meat left, so I put vedgetables and noodles in the soup. YUM! This time I put in potatoes, springonions and carrots -and I saved the peels in the freezer for next time!