chicken and rice soup: maybe creamy, possibly with bacon.

This is an updated, expanded edition of a previous blog post.  It just goes to show that this is a classic, staple food at our house, and it's a great way to use up any leftovers from the roast chicken you made last night after my recipe went viral.  Or whatever.  

I make a lot of soup.  A loooooot of soup.  Why? Because #1. I love soup.  I could eat it every day.  #2. It's cheap and easy.  #3. It stretches to feed a lot of people over a lot of days.  #4.  You can make it early in the day so dinner time is less stressful.  #5.  Very little clean up.  #6.  Who doesn't like soup?  #7.  I could really keep going with this list.

Of all the soups in the whole world, I would like to submit that this is the best soup.  It is the Soup of Soups.  It will win over even the staunchest of the soup-averse.  It will win you friends and help you influence people.  In short, it will change your life.

This is The Soup, sans bacon and cream.  It was excellent, but I'm always in favor of leveling up.  Add the bacon and cream if you like to live up to your full potential.

I have two secrets to making an extraordinary soup, which I'll share with you if you promise not to tell anyone.  Are you ready?

1.  Don't use a crockpot.  Please swear to me you won't use a crockpot.  Crockpots take everything good and wonderful in this world and turn it all into flavorless, textureless sadness.  Don't try to convince me that you have some miracle crockpot recipe that will change my mind.  It will not change my mind.  I am unconvinceable.

2.  Cook each component of the soup as though you would be eating it on a plate.  What I mean by that is, like, roast or bake or grill the chicken like you do for other meals; don't boil it to death.  Would you eat boiled chicken by itself on a plate?  No.  Would you eat seasoned, grilled chicken?  Yes.  Sautee the veggies in some good fat; again, don't boil them in the soup broth.  You would not enjoy eating mushy boiled vegetables by themselves.  Think of a good soup as basically a complementary marriage of some awesome individuals; not a hot tub full of the old and leathery.

I never apologize for my terrible food photos, which seem to be always taken under fluorescent lighting after dark.  Maybe I should start apologizing.  But whatever, I trust you can get the gist: these sautéed-in-bacon-grease vegetables are going to taste way better in soup than ones that have been boiled into next year.

Okay, so with that in mind, here is the recipe that has won me more friends in the course of life than my mediocre personality has:

Ingredients:

Veggies:
1 onion, chopped.
3 carrots, peeled and chopped. (or equivalent baby carrots chopped)
3 stalks celery, halved and chopped.
4-6 cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped.  (so much chopping!)

Meat:
1/2 lb bacon, cut into 1/2-inch pieces, optional (kind of).
2 chicken breasts, cooked and chopped into bite size pieces.  (grilled, baked, or roasted in advance.)

Rice:
~2 cups cooked rice, cooked in broth if you have some extra on hand. (I like jasmine or brown basmati because they maintain their structural integrity, even when they've been sitting in the broth for a bit.  I hate it when rice turns to pastemeal in soup.)

Liquids:
4-6 cups broth
1.5 cups heavy cream, optional (I guess).

Seasonings:
1 tsp (ish) salt
1 tsp (ish) pepper
dash of cayenne
1 tsp (ish) rosemary
1 bay leaf

Okay, before we move on, let me give you another unapologetic head's up that my photos are terrible; also, I forgot to take a photo of the finished product with both bacon and cream, so more photos of the un-Bammed soup will have to suffice. 

Directions:

1. If using bacon, fry it right in the soup pot until crispy.  Remove bacon, but the rendered bacon grease in the pot.  If not using, heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil, lard or saved bacon grease over medium heat until shimmery.  (You ARE saving your bacon grease, aren't you?!)

2.  Add veggies to hot oil, season with salt and pepper, and sauté until the onion is translucent and the carrots and celery are soft but not mushy.

3.  Add bacon (if using), cooked chicken, and cooked rice to pot, and add enough broth to cover ingredients by an inch or two.  Add cream if using (and you should be using).  Heat through, and season to taste with salt, pepper, rosemary and cayenne.  Add bay leaf and simmer on low for 20-30 minutes.  Remove bay leaf before serving.

4.  Serve to guests and accept their eternal gratitude with grace when it's offered.
I like to triple or quadruple this recipe when I make it.  When I serve soup, I often serve it two nights in a row because it's so much better the next day, and it makes menu planning so simple in the winter months.  (This week, it is especially nice to have something simple and filling already made and in the fridge, to free up my time for Thanksgiving cooking.)  So I serve two batches in a row, and freeze the rest.  I just leave the broth and cream out of the ones headed to the freezer, and add the liquids later when I'm ready to heat it through and serve it.

Here's how I prep it for the freezer - I can pull it out of the freezer and throw everything together the afternoon before serving, or I can use the individual ingredients in other recipes if I so choose.  I like keeping prepped, flexible, ready-to-eat ingredients on hand.  I also sometimes just throw all the dry ingredients into the same gallon-sized bag, but I always keep the broth separate or it can make everything really mushy when it reheats.

And there you have it.  The best thing that's about to happen to you.