Chicken Soup Recipe

As someone who spent the first two years of living alone not cooking meat for fear of under or overcooking it, buying an entire chicken was intimidating. Growing up, my parents never used chicken or vegetable stock and made everything from scratch. After using stock once, I immediately knew why my parents had opted not to do so.

I had woken up feeling sick one morning and knew that I needed chicken soup. Thankfully, it turned out to be pretty easy to make and now I’m obsessed with making it! Here’s my variation – change up the ingredients to your liking. I used a 3.5 quart pot, you may want to adjust the ingredient quantity based on the size of your pot.

Ingredients

• one whole chicken
• 1/2 large onion or 1 medium onion, chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 4 small carrots, approximately 1.5 cups chopped
• 4 stalks of celery, approximately 1.5 cups chopped
• 2.5 cups of chopped kale
• 1/3 cup barley – I used the Trader Joe’s 10 minute barley
• 1/3 cup orzo
• salt and pepper
• lemon (optional)

Directions

1. Put the chicken in the pot and fill the pot with water. Sometimes there’s a bag of chicken guts stuffed inside the chicken, pull it out and toss it.
2. Throw in the chopped onions into the pot. Put on high heat until it boils, turn to medium heat and let it simmer for 45 minutes.
3. Pull out the chicken and let it cool. Once it cools a little, pull apart pieces of chicken. I usually use part dark and part light meat. I don’t eat the meat in chicken soups a lot so I just put in one cup of slightly shredded chicken, but you can add in more than that.
4. Toss in celery, carrots, kale, garlic, orzo, and barley. Let simmer for 15 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
5. Serve with a squeeze of lemon (optional).