Homemade Chicken & Vegetable Soup Recipe

This is a great recipe for home made chicken & vegetable soup - everyone will love it!  Tom started making it for Ethan years ago to make sure he was getting enough vegetables in his diet. Tom makes this for us on Sunday and we bring it to work for lunch throughout the week.  We encourage you to use whatever kind of vegetables you want in your soup, the recipe is just some of our recommendations.

Breaking this recipe into two days will make the soup lower in fat.  We have the chicken stock set overnight in the refrigerator so that we can easily skim the fat off the top before the stock is added to the other soup ingredients. 

Ingredients

1 whole chicken

1 bag of soup veg consisting of onion, celery, carrots, radish, parsnip, leeks, thyme, and parsley

1 8 oz box of whole grain pasta shells (we found a pasta made with quinoa)

Olive oil

Spices

Salt

Pepper

Oregano

Chopped garlic

Dried basil

Bay leaf

Vegetables

1 red bell pepper

1 yellow bell pepper

1 zucchini

10 brussel sprouts

1 box frozen corn / lima bean mixed

1 cup of green lentils

2 heads of broccoli

2 cups of chopped kale

4 carrots, sliced

Directions

Day 1

1. Chop all ingredents in soup veg.
2. In a large pot add olive oil on medium flame.  Add two tablespoons of chopped garlic, chopped soup veg, bay leaf, and all other spices. 
3. Saute for five minutes.
4. Add chicken and fill pot with water until chicken is covered.
5. Bring pot to boil on medium flame for approximately one hour. 
6. Remove from heat and let sit for a half of an hour.
7. While chicken is cooking, chop up remaining vegetables and store in ziploc bag for tomorrow.
8. Remove chicken from pot and strain remaining ingredients into empty bowl.
9. Store in refrigerator over night.  We leave the chicken and other ingredients in the strainer dripping into the chicken stock bowl to get as much natural flavor as possible.  (See picture)

 

Day 2

1. In a large pot, add olive oil, chopped garlic, green lentils and the vegetables you cut up yesterday. 
2. Season with spices and saute.
3. While vegetables are sauting, pull chicken meat from whole chicken boiled the day prior and add into pot. 
4. Take chicken stock out of the refrigerator.  All of the fat should settle on the top and the stock should be a gelatin consistency.  Skim the fat off the top of the chicken stock (see picture).
5. Pour chicken stock into pot. 
6. Bring all ingredients to a boil. 
7. Add pasta.
8. Simmer on medium heat for five minutes. 
9. Remove from heat and add kale. 
10. Let soup cool for about 15 minutes and store based on your family's needs. (We vaccumm seal and freeze half and have the other half for this week's lunches and a couple of dinners.)