Homemade Chicken Soup
Made just like Grandma’s, Homemade Chicken Soup is a tried and true recipe. Making broth from scratch is easy using fresh ingredients like bone-in chicken, celery, onions, and carrots. Shred the chicken and add some El Pato tomato sauce for a kick in the pants.
Using skinless chicken breast, it’s also healthy and lower in calories, plus it freezes well. Added flavors of thyme and parsley blend beautifully to round out this delicious soup.
There’s nothing like Homemade Chicken Soup. It’s a comfort food from way back, and you don’t even have to be sick to enjoy it.
The trick is to use fresh ingredients and not use too much water so that your flavors get washed away. Let’s get started.
Making Homemade Chicken Soup
In a large pot, add your chicken and cover with water and add salt. As the chicken simmers for the next hour, water will evaporate, so you’ll need to add more water as you go. This water is your broth.
Once the chicken is cooked, after about an hour, remove it to a plate and shred it with some forks.
Add the large bones and the shredded chicken back into the broth, discarding any small bones or fat. Placing the bones back into the broth continues to add flavor to the soup.
Adding fresh ingredients.
Next is pretty easy, just add the rest of the ingredients. Start with fresh veggies for optimal flavor. The carrots and celery, onions and cabbage, they’ll all taste so much better when they’re crisp and fresh.
Chop the veggies consistently into small enough pieces that they’ll spoon up nicely.
As the soup simmers for another 2 hours bringing all those individual flavors together, watch the water level.
The trick is to NOT water-down the soup with too much water. If such a dastardly thing happens, no problem; just add a chicken bullion cube to add flavor back in.
You can also add a bullion cube when the chicken just doesn’t have a lot of flavor. Salt and pepper only goes so far.
One other note, I love adding El Pato Tomato Sauce into the soup. It’s a hot Mexican style tomato sauce, so just be careful how much you add. It really gives the soup a nice kick, but I can only add half of an 8 oz. can. If you can stand the heat, add more.
Before serving Homemade Chicken Soup.
Remove the bay leaf and all bones before serving, and refrigerate any leftovers.
Loving everything chicken?
Chicken is awesome, it’s cheap (when on sale), can be healthy, especially the breast meat, and there’s many ways to prepare it.
Here are a few other recipes using chicken:
- Homemade Green Chicken Enchiladas
- Slow Cooker Chicken Curry
- Crunchy BBQ Chicken Nuggets
- Chicken Fajita Foil Packets
Or, you can always go to the chicken category on my blog for even more chicken recipes.
Homemade Chicken Soup
Ingredients
- 2 large bone-in skinless chicken breasts, (or 3 small)
- enough water to cover chicken
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 2 cups green cabbage, chopped
- 2 ribs celery, chopped
- 1/2 cup onions, chopped
- 1/2 cup carrots, chopped
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 1/2 tsp. dried parsley flakes
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 tsp. dried thyme
- salt and pepper to taste
- 4 oz. El Pato tomato sauce (Mexican Hot Style), optional
- additional water as needed
Instructions
- In a large pot, add chicken and just enough water to cover it. Add salt. Simmer on low for 1 hour, skimming fat off the top as it rises. Add more water as needed to keep chicken covered.
- Remove chicken to a plate and shred. Return large bones and chicken to the broth.
- Add remaining ingredients and let simmer on low for 2 hours. Add water only if soup appears too thick.
- Remove bones and bay leaf before serving. Enjoy!
Notes
Nutrition
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I hope you love the recipe and have a wonderful day.
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