Chicken Noodle Soup

One of my dad's favorite pastimes is to try making dinner without going grocery shopping. He likes the challenge of using what is already in the kitchen to make a meal. I don't have quite the knack for it that he does, but he has several years' worth of experience on me, so I don't mind.

However... I have to admit that I did a pretty amazing job yesterday.

I was cleaning out one of the cabinets (as part of the kitchenventory) and found an old can of chicken noodle soup... old enough that I didn't want to eat it. But it sounded good. So I thought, "Oh, I'll go to Panera on my way to work and get some soup for lunch." But then I thought, "There's chicken in the fridge, and I just pulled half a bag of egg noodles out of this cabinet." Lo and behold, I had the stuff to make an actual chicken noodle soup in the Crockpot.

This is a recipe where I'm listing what I had and used, but it's very versatile, so make substitutes all over the place.

Chicken Noodle Soup (Slow Cooker)

Ingredients

two boneless, skinless chicken breasts

about 3 cups of chicken broth

about 3 cups of water

half a packet of onion soup mix

half a bag of baby carrots

half a bag of frozen peas

half a bag of frozen green beans

salt, pepper, shallot-pepper seasoning

half a bag of egg noodles

Equipment

slow cooker

Instructions

Place the chicken in the bottom of the slow cooker. Cover with the veggies and liquids. Cook on low for 6-7 hours (mine went about 8 because of work schedule). Take out the chicken and shred it with a fork (this should be really easy, it'll just fall apart) and put it back in. Add the noodles and let it cook for another 20-30 minutes. Add more liquid if you feel like it needs it.

Yields
5-6 servings... I'm working my way through the leftovers now.

Total time
7-8 hours (prep time about 5 minutes)

Cleanup rating 4/5
If you don't use a slow cooker liner, slow cookers can be a pain to clean. But at least it's only one dish. Still, this has lots of little bits of things and if you don't lick the pot clean, you have to clean little bits of things off of it.

Difficulty rating 2/10
Make sure you remember to pull out the chicken and shred it and put in the noodles on time, but otherwise, this is super easy.

Flavor rating 8/10
It might be because this was exactly what I wanted or because I skipped lunch, but this was DELICIOUS.

Adjustability: high
Since this was an on-the-fly recipe, that kind of defines it as an adjustable recipe. Use whatever vegetables and seasonings you have on hand. Have more chicken broth? Use it; I had about three cups, so that's what I used. Have vegetable broth instead? Go for it.

Make it with...
Nothing or anything. This was a hearty meal on its own and didn't need anything to go with it.

French Onion Soup

French Onion Soup

Ingredients

3 large yellow onions (slice 'em up)

4 Tbsp butter

1 cup white wine (I used pinot grigio)

42 oz beef broth

Salt and pepper

bread

shredded cheese (I used Gouda)

Equipment

slow-cooker, skillet, stove

Instructions

Melt the butter in the skillet. Add onions and saute until they're soft and a little bit browned. Add the wine. Pour it into the slow-cooker with the beef broth, and a dash of salt and pepper. Cook on low for 4-5 hours. Toast the bread lightly. Serve in bowls with bread on top, cheese on top of that, and add a little more soup on top of the cheese to melt it all together.

Yields

4-6 bowls of soup

Total time

4.5 hours: About 15 minutes of prep, 4 hours in the slow-cooker, 10 minutes to finish off

Cleanup rating 4/5

Slow-cooker recipes always have higher cleanup ratings. We didn't like this enough to keep the leftovers, so I strained the liquid out of it with a colander into the sink, and threw out the remaining onion pieces. Plus you have more dishes than you normally get from a slow-cooker recipe: skillet, knife and cutting board, and the five billion tears from cutting up so much onion at once.

Difficulty rating 3/10

There are many steps, but none of them are particularly difficult. You do need to try to get the onion slices approximately the same size for even cooking, but that's probably the trickiest part.

Flavor rating 4/10

Meh. I don't really know what went wrong with it, but it just wasn't very good. The wine flavor was pretty strong, which is not what I want out of a French onion soup. I think that was the biggest problem. I would cut down on the wine.

Adjustability: low

There isn't much to French onion soup. There's onions, liquid, then bread and cheese. It's rare for "peasant food" to not be very adjustable, but this one doesn't have much of anywhere to go. Different onions, different wine, different broth, different bread, different cheese, but they're all the same basic ingredients. For what it's worth, the gouda worked really well, even though the original recipe suggested Swiss.

Make it with...

I made it with beer mushrooms, sauteed beer brats with garlic, and potatoes. It could be its own meal, or go with all sorts of things.