Raid the Fridge Chicken Soup

Nothing warms me like a nice, cozy bowl of chicken soup on a cool day.  I say cool because I live in Arizona where winters are more cool than they are cold.  Yesterday was a cool 56 degrees and overcast, the perfect weather for cozy soup.  Now, in the Valley of the Sun ,we get 300+ sunny days a year, so I take advantage of the other 65 overcast days as an opportunity to make soup. 

I was thinking about what kind of soup I was going to make on my drive home from work.  I didn't want to stop at the store because I had a busy night ahead of me, so I decided to make chicken soup because I had leftover rotisserie chicken in my refrigerator.  Gosh I love a rotisserie chicken!  Every time I see them in the store, I see endless possibility and a plethora of recipe ideas.  Luckily I had homemade chicken broth in my freezer and lots of produce left from my weekly farm basket.  Yay! I didn't have to stop at the store!  I love chicken soup because the recipe is so flexible.  As long as you have chicken and broth, you can add just about any vegetable and voila! chicken soup.  I added all the veggies in my refrigerator to the soup and completed the meal with homemade whole wheat biscuits.  Healthy, cozy dinner for my family, check.

I like my soup to have lots of "stuff" in it, so even my chicken soup is more like a stew, maybe I'll call it a "stoup".  So, I raided my refrigerator for all the yummy veggies I could fit in my soup pot and came up with this recipe.  But as I said before, chicken soup is such a flexible recipe, you could add any amount and combination of veggies and still have a delicious soup.

Raid the Fridge Chicken Soup
Serves 4-6

1 lb cooked chicken
4C+ chicken broth (depending on how "brothy" you like your soup)
2 T. Olive Oil
1 small onion
2 carrots sliced thin (I used the slicing side of my cheese grater)
2 stalks celery
2 large collard greens leaves cut into bite size pieces
1/4 head purple cabbage sliced
1 bay leaf
1 tsp sage
1 tsp rosemary
salt and pepper to taste

In a soup pot saute onions, carrot and celery in oil over medium/med-high heat until onions are translucent.  Add chicken broth and chicken and boil.  While waiting for the soup to boil, saute the greens and cabbage in a pan (or you can just add them to boiling soup, but I like the way the sauteed veggies taste better).  Add greens, cabbage, and spices and simmer for about 10 minutes.  Enjoy!

I served these with this recipe that I found at The Simple Homemaker, but using whole wheat flour:

Sleeping Baby Biscuit Recipe

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour (of your choice) - I used my fresh ground whole wheat flour, delicious!!
• 3-4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar (if you don’t have it, skip it! It adds a little fluff to the biscuits, but so does the baking powder, so don’t worry about it.)
• 1 tablespoon honey - sometimes I use maple syrup
• 1/2 cup butter
• 2/3 cup water or milk

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 450.
2. Mix dry ingredients in one bowl.
3. Cut in butter. (Cold butter cut into the flour using a pastry cutter or a back and forth motion with two table knives will lend a flaky texture to these biscuits. Seeing as we live in the real world, I often soften the butter and stir it in with a GASP wooden spoon.)
4. Mix milk/water and honey in another bowl. (Okay, fine, I just dump them both in the flour/butter mixture…and I don’t actually measure my honey.) Add to dry ingredients.
5. Mix until it holds together. Then dump it onto a lightly floured surface and knead about a dozen times.
6. Flatten the dough gently and cut with a biscuit cutter or the top of a cup or glass into about 12 biscuits.
7. If you like crusty edges, place the biscuits on a baking sheet about two inches apart. If you like softer edges from a “pull-apart” biscuit, put them close together in a pan. You may brush the tops with melted butter or milk, but again, real world!
8. I like to let them rest for about twenty minutes before baking, but, seriously, my babies don’t sleep that long, so I usually just throw them in the oven. Bake at 450 for 10 minutes or until they are done to your liking.

Shared at: Whole Food Wednesdays, Rattlbridge Farms Foodie Friday