Chicken Soup

Chicken Soup

6 cups chicken stock

1 cup chicken pieces

¼ cup onion

½ tsp. crushed basil

¼ cup barley, optional

½ cup celery

1 cup carrots

Salt and pepper to taste

Use chicken stock, or use six cups water and six bouillon cubes. Pour chicken stock into a large pot. Add chicken, onion, basil, and optional barley. Bring to a boil, and then turn the soup down to a simmer. If you use barley, cook the above ingredients for 60 minutes before adding the vegetables. If you skipped the barley, you can also skip cooking it for an hour. Add the vegetables and cook for about 10 minutes, or until vegetables are tender. Taste soup and add salt and pepper to correct flavor. This is an easy soup to change to your taste, adding more spices, vegetables, potatoes, dumplings, etc. See recipe for dumplings in the quick breads section.

Chicken Noodle Variation: instead of barley, add noodles with the vegetables, and cook until noodles are done.

Tiffany's Notes: Okay, so technically the photo isn't a picture of Chicken Soup--it's a turkey noodle soup with mixed vegetables.  I baked a turkey a few weeks ago.  So we wouldn't have to eat turkey for days I froze a few containers of turkey and broth. 

Yesterday I put the following into my slow cooker (Crock Pot): 

3 cups turkey and broth (one of my containers of frozen leftovers)

6 cups water

6 chicken bouillon cubes

1 16 oz. bag frozen original mixed vegetables (including potatoes)

I cooked it for a couple of hours and added...

1 1/2 cups (8 oz.) cut spaghetti pasta

and cooked it for another hour in the slow cooker until it was time for dinner.

Becky's Note: I attempted homemade noodles for the first time when I recently made chicken soup.  They turned out great (even without a pasta press!).  I love to add green beans to my chicken soup for more color.