Soups, Stews, Chili - October 2009

October! Wow. Where DID the time go? It’s fall! I love fall. I love the whole holiday season. There are foods I reserve specifically for this time of year. It makes them just a tad more special. Our neighborhood recipe club’s theme for October is Soups, Stews, and Chili. I’m not sure why, but I want soup as soon as it gets cool. Soup is great in the summer since it can be such a light dinner, but I don’t crave it like I do in the fall and winter. I guess its comfort food to the max.
Some soups are quite the production and some are really simple. Some start with canned soups and other pre-made ingredients and build on that, some are from scratch to the point of even making your own noodles! I like both. Some are done in the time it takes to heat it up and others are a process over a couple of days. As long as the end result is worth it to you, does it really matter how you got there?
I love adding a special bread to serve with soup. A salad along side is great too. It’s also one of the few meals that I feel like there is actually room for dessert after (yea).
One of my all-time favorite menus for entertaining is a buffet of soups and a salad or a little sandwich spread. I like to use smaller bowls so people can have more than one kind of soup—and they always do, so set out lots of bowls and spoons. In a soup bar I try and have some variety in the soup type. For instance, a cream base, or two as this is always a favorite, a clear broth (non-dairy) base, a chili, and a vegetarian if it hasn’t been covered in one of the other choices. Other interesting sides for a soup bar are, cheese ball and crackers, muffins, and sweet breads, as well as the traditional savory breads and crackers.

So, quick and easy or long and involved—“Soup’s on!!”

Grandma's Cream of Chicken Soup
Crock-Pot Chili
Mexi-can Soup
Crock-Pot Minestrone Soup
Baked Potato Soup

Grandma's Cream of Chicken Soup

Grandma’s Cream of Chicken Soup

1 whole chicken
water
½ cup chicken bouillon granules
3 large potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 stalk of celery, diced fine
1 carrot, diced fine
1 large onion, minced
16 oz (2 cups) sour cream
thickening (flour and water, or whatever you prefer)

This is the type of recipe my mother (Grandma) would call “by guess and by golly”, meaning that I watched her make it and wrote it down while she did it. I made it again myself with her sitting in her wheelchair in my kitchen and she pronounced it the same. That’s as good as it got for us. I use a crock-pot for some of this recipe since it frees me up a lot.

Put a whole chicken (without giblets or neck) in a large (5 to 6 qt—I like 6) Crock-Pot. Add water until about an inch or two short of the top. Put in the ½ cup bouillon. Yup, seriously, a half a cup. Well, maybe a 1/3 if you are using a 5 qt. Let cook, on high about 5 or 6 hours, on low you can cook it all day. My favorite method is to put it in on Low last thing before I go to bed at night and then when I get around to it in the morning or early afternoon it’s all ready. The broth is your soup base. I do the rest on the stove since it’s faster, but you can do it all in the Crock-Pot. Chicken is done when it falls off the bone.

Remove chicken (and any bones) from broth. Set chicken aside to cool. Pour broth into a large pot. Taste to see if it’s too salty, if it is, add a little water (but I don’t usually have to). It should taste like good, ready to use chicken broth. Add potato, celery, carrot, and onion. (I use a food processor and put the onion, celery and carrot in together and process in pulses until it’s all finely diced.) Boil/simmer vegetables in broth until the potato is done. When the vegetables are cooked to your desired doneness, add thickening just as you would to gravy and continue to cook for a minute or two until thick.

Meanwhile, skin and bone chicken and shred or cut in pieces. When soup is thickened, add chicken meat. Stir well. Remove from heat and stir in sour cream. Serve.



*This makes a good-sized pot full of soup. When re-heating leftovers, don’t bring to a full boil because the sour cream will curdle. If you are making it ahead of time to serve later or freeze, cook to the point where the chicken is added and then refigerate or freeze. When soup is heated for serving, add sour cream.
This is a family favorite and much easier than it looks with all these instructions!

Crock-Pot Chili

Crock-Pot Chili
(A sincere thanks to my sister Katy who shared this recipe)

1 lrg onion, diced
1 lb ground beef
1 can (28 oz) diced tomatoes, undrained
Approx. 20 oz kidney beans, partially drained
(They used to make a 20oz can, no you have to do it yourself)
1 tsp salt
dash of pepper
1 ½ tsp chili powder
1 tsp cumin
½ cup ketchup
cheddar cheese, shredded

Brown hamburger with onion, drain. Put all ingredients in a slow cooker; stir thoroughly. Cook on high 5 to 6 hours. Garnish each serving with cheese. Makes 4 to 6 servings.

*As good as this is the day you make it, it’s even better re-heated the next day. I really like chili and have a few recipes that I make, but this is my favorite.

Mexi-Can Soup

Mexi-Can Soup

10 oz can tomatoes with chiles, undrained
10¾ oz can condensed vegetable beef soup
10¾ oz can condensed tomato soup
15 oz can chili with beans
1 ½ cups frozen corn (or a 15¼ oz can corn, drained)
Fritos
sour cream
cheddar cheese, shredded

Combine first 5 ingredients in a pan and heat well.

To serve, put in order in each bowl:
Fritos, broken up
hot soup
sour cream
cheddar cheese

*Good served with dry-fried flour tortillas, with butter and honey or cinnamon sugar.

Crock-pot Minestrone Soup

Crock-pot Minestrone Soup

1 lb bulk Italian sausage or links with casings removed, browned and drained
(I like spicy, but you could use any kind, or a lb of burger instead)
2 cans (10 ¾ oz each) condensed minestrone soup
2 cups water
2 cans (15 oz each) pork and beans
1 cup shredded carrot
½ cup dried diced minced onion (or 1 lrg fresh onion, chopped)
1 ½ Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2 Tbsp spicy spaghetti seasoning (or Italian seasoning)
1 (26 oz) jar spaghetti sauce

Combine all ingredients in a crock-pot. Cook on Low 3 to 5 hours.

I like to serve this with Italian grilled cheese sandwiches. Use slices of French bread, mozzarella cheese, and add garlic seasoning on the butter. Yum!

Baked Potato Soup

Baked Potato Soup

4 large (or 3 really really large) baking potatoes—*baked
2/3 cup butter
2/3 cup flour
6 cups milk
1 ½ tsp salt
1 tsp white pepper
4 green onions, chopped
12 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled (6 slices if thick)
1 ¼ cup shredded cheddar cheese
8 oz (1 cup) sour cream

*Bake potatoes in a 400 degree oven until done, about 1 hour. Let cool some and scrape out pulp. Discard skins.

Melt butter in a heavy saucepan over low heat; add flour, stirring until smooth. Cook 1 minute, stirring constantly. Gradually add milk, cook over medium heat (med-high? Watch carefully!), stirring constantly, until thickened and bubbly. This takes longer than you would think--just a warning.
Add potato pulp, salt, pepper, *onion, *bacon, and *cheese. Cook until thoroughly heated. Stir in sour cream. The recipe says it serves 10, but no way is that true in my house. 6 maybe? In a soup bar I double this, put it in a 6qt crock-pot to keep warm, and it’s always the first to go.

*If you are serving this for a special occasion and want to make it extra nice, you can reserve half the bacon, all but 2 Tbsp of the onion, and a ¼ cup of the cheese to garnish the top of each serving.