Mom’s Easiest Chicken Soup
What You’ll Need:
Ingredients
4 tablespoons of EVOO
2 garlic cloves
1 whole white onion
7 celery stalks
1/2 bag of baby carrots
One organic whole chicken
Lots of water! (exact amount depends on the size of your cooking pot)
Garlic salt
Pepper
1/4 cup of fresh Italian parsley
2 bay leaves
3 dashes of dried oregano
Equipment
Soup pot
Two medium bowls
Latex gloves (optional)
Directions:
Finely chop your whole white onion and then put it in your soup pot with about four tablespoons of EVOO (extra virgin olive oil). Sauté on medium heat for three minutes.
Finely chop your two garlic cloves and add this to the soup pot. Cook on medium heat for five minutes.
Cut up both your carrots and celery and then add them the pot. Stir occasionally and sprinkle some garlic salt and pepper while the vegetables cook.
Next up: the chicken! Rinse it under water to make sure it is cleaned properly. Then, simply place the whole chicken in the pot. It should go directly on top of your veggies.
Fill your pot with as much water as needed until the chicken is fully submerged in liquid. This will help ensure that you’re left with plenty of natural chicken broth when the soup has finished cooking. And keep in mind that some of the liquid will burn off as it cooks!
Add any spices you enjoy. For me, this means more garlic salt and pepper. In addition to parsley, bay leaf and oregano. Rosemary and thyme would also be good to add if you like those spices!
Cover the pot (leaving just a crack open for air) and cook on medium heat for about two hours. You should check the soup occasionally, giving it all a stir so the broth, chicken and spices continue to mix together.
Once the soup has cooked, turn off the heat and set it aside. You will need it to cool since the next step is removing the chicken from the pot and breaking apart the meat. You won’t want to burn yourself!
For this part, I use latex gloves. Of course, you can pull the meat apart with bare hands, but I get a little grossed out by the bones and meat. You’ll also want to grab two medium size bowls.
Place the whole chicken in one of the bowls. Then, begin breaking the chicken apart, so you can start to get all the delicious meat off. Do it carefully and slowly since there are some small bones that you don’t want to add to your soup! Place all white meat in your second bowl, that way one bowl ends up being for the bones and fat (and perhaps any meat you don’t want), and the other is for the meat you do want to eat!
After you have finished pulling the chicken apart, dump all the meat back into your broth and discard of the bones.
Cook the soup on medium heat for another 30-minutes.
It’s time to eat! Serve the chicken soup as is or pour it over some noodles to re-create a hearty and healthy chicken noodle soup!
