Description

My Smoked Chicken Rice Soup is a slow cooker smoked chicken soup full of traditional soup vegetables with shiitake mushrooms, green beans and wild rice. Makes a very filling soup. All you need is a sandwich to make a complete meal.

Scale

Ingredients

Villari Brothers® Smokehouse Crafted Smoked Chicken Breasts (2 packs or 4 breast pieces; 2 oz. serving equals 220g sodium, 14 g protein)

Pacific® Organic Chicken Bone Broth – 2 cartons or 64 oz.(low-sodium, 9g protein per serving, gluten-free)

4 large cloves of garlic

4 to 5 whole sprigs of fresh thyme

salt and pepper to taste

Plus 4 cups chicken bouillon

1 cup diced yellow onion

1 cup sliced baby carrots

5 oz. sliced shiitake mushrooms

1 1/2 cups cleaned trimmed green beans cut into 1 inch lengths

2 to 3 cups of smoked chicken bits (or all 4 chicken breasts)

Rice:

1 cup of Lundberg® Wild Blend Rice

1 large Maggi® chicken bouillon cube or granulated chicken bouillon to taste

Rice: Follow package instructions to cook one cup of rice. I add a chicken bouillon cube to the water in which the rice is cooked. Just another layer of flavor.

Instructions

Place several large sprigs of fresh thyme in the bottom of a large capacity crock pot. Add 4 or more large cloves of fresh garlic.

Top with smoked chicken pieces and arrange them so they form as even a layer as possible.

Pour 2 whole containers of organic chicken broth in a sauce pan and heat to a near simmer. Pour over the chicken and add a few sprigs of celery leaves.

Set to HIGH for 2 hours. Cook until chicken is fork tender.

Meanwhile cut the veggies and set aside. I used these small oval containers as measuring cups – they contain a little more than a cup. To tell the truth, I made a fridge raid and used up all the carrots and celery I had. One large onion more than filled the little white tub.

The green beans amounted to the remaining half a large bag of cleaned and trimmed green beans used for a baby potato, green bean and cherry tomato salad we had the previous day with a grilled steak.

After the chicken has cooked for two hours, remove from the broth and set aside on a large platter. Allow to cool off then remove the tough skin. Remove the meat form the bones and cut into small pieces. Set aside.

Add heated broth to the slow cooker to make the desired amount of soup. Add the onions, celery, carrots, and green beans to the broth.

Cook on LOW for about 2 hours adding the chicken bits about 15 minutes before you are ready to serve. All you want to do is reheat them.

At this point, you can add the desired amount of pre-cooked rice to the soup or proceed as I do.

Notes

I assemble this soup as I do a Ramen soup. I place a serving of rice and chicken bits in the bottom of a large soup bowl then ladle the broth and veggies over the rice.

Cooking the rice separately is also easier. There would not be any broth left in the soup if you cooked the soup during the last 45 minutes or so.

Serving Size? Depends entirely on the person eating the soup in this house! A large soup bowl or two. Or in my case, a smaller soup bowl. I tend to prepare soup in the quantities I know will be eaten not so much in “serving” sizes. Especially when soup is the main part of the meal.

Nutrition

Serving Size: 16 oz.

Keywords: rice, smoked chicken, soup, slow cooker