Asian Chicken Soup. . .sort of

I'm a big fan of soup. All kinds of soup. Hot soup, cold soup, I'll try them all. Most of the time, I wing it when I make it at home.  I never quite have all the ingredients at hand when I'm making soup, unless it's something I've planned in advance.  I don't measure, I just taste a lot, until it tastes the way I want it to taste.

Even though I don't really measure anything, I'm putting up an approximation of the ingredients I used tonight.

4 halved, skinless, boneless chicken breasts
Kosher salt & fresh ground pepper
A couple of cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped
Half an onion, finely diced
2 carrots, finely diced
1 10 ounce container mushrooms, sliced thinly
Butter
Fresh ginger, grated
1/4 cup Tamari (approximately - go easy and adjust to taste)
1-1/2 cup frozen corn
6 - 8 cups chicken stock
2 cups water

I salted and peppered the chicken breasts. I then put powdered garlic and powdered ginger on them and browned them on a cast iron grill pan.

I melted about half a stick of butter in a Dutch oven and to that, I added the onion, carrots, the garlic and the mushrooms.  If you have shitake on hand, use those. I only had white button mushrooms, so that's what I used.

Once the vegetables were softened, I added some chicken stock that I had in the freezer. I don't know how much - a Tupperware lettuce container full - and added 2 cups of water and about a cup and a half of frozen corn. I tossed in some kosher salt, fresh ground pepper, a couple of splashes of Tamari and some fresh grated ginger. If you happen to have water chestnuts or other Asian vegetables, now would be a good time to add them. 

I diced the chicken up into small pieces and put that in the pot.  Then I boiled some Soba noodles. These cook very quickly - 4 minutes tops - and they MUST be rinsed in cold water, otherwise they become a sticky, gooey mess.

Put the noodles into the bottom of a bowl and ladle the soup over the top and then serve.

This soup could become a lot of things.

Take out the ginger and Tamari, add green beans, cannellini beans, ditalini and some diced tomatoes and it becomes sort of Italian.  If you used egg noodles or another wide pasta, it would just be chicken noodle.  You could stir flour into the butter/vegetable medley to thicken it up some and cook dumplings on top of it.  You could also chuck random stuff in there and see how it comes out. Soup is pretty forgiving and benefits from experimentation.

Since the Shriek Sisters don't like soup, I am able to present photographic evidence that I actually made this. I'll spare you the shot of the empty bowl. It's not nearly as pretty.

Comments

[Erin]

This looks fantastic. I LOVE soup, can't wait to try it out!