Friday, November 21, 2014

Chicken Soup Made Easy - with Beans even!

So I've mentioned a million times in previous posts that I am not a natural born cook like my sister. My sister can open up her pantry and her fridge and see that she has six ingredients in there and she can whip up a meal just using those things!

I can be in the middle of a whole grocery store with tons of ingredients and I couldn't figure out how to boil water without a recipe in writing!

Luckily there are people, like my sister, that are great at being creative with food, and they actually have the good sense to write it down, with pictures and step by step photos! Not that my sister doesn't have sense, she just doesn't have time to write everything down!

So I've been hunting down soup recipes! I know that we're not in the middle of a freeze here in sunny California, but it does get cold people. At least cold for a transplanted Arizonian!

I found a great recipe and a great Chef. And you know why this Chef is so great? Because not only does he create these recipes and write them down, but darned if he doesn't do a video too!

Chef John is an online teaching Chef on the award winning food blog Food Wishes. I love this blog! He has so many recipes and tips and ideas and you know what else? He is damned entertaining. Such a creative, droll, sarcastic sense of humor! Just love him!

The recipe that I tried and loved is Chef John's White Bean and Chicken Breast Chili. This is a photo of his version. Doesn't that look great? Plus I really love the white bowl, that bowl just screams "Soup's on!"

Photo Credit - Food Wishes
This soup called for quite a few ingredients I didn't have on hand, so I had to stop by the store. Is it just me or do you have the experience that you can stop by the grocery store to pick up a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread and you end up at the register with a full shopping cart of $200 in groceries? Every single time!

Here's my version. I made it a bit more soupy as I wanted a soup, not a chili. Verdict? Loved it! So rich and spicy.


Some of the ingredients that Chef John had me get were things I had never tried before, but then again I had never tried making a soup before either. I had to get powdered Ancho Chili and powdered Chipotle Powder and Corn Meal. I had also always wanted to try Cannellini Beans so as long as his recipe called for white beans I bought them, they were good, very meaty.

My peeps are not very fond of onions, but I decided it was time they grew up and ate like real adults and not like five year old kids that can't abide onions, so I did just like Chef John instructs in his video and started out by caramelizing the onions. My peeps loved it! You can taste the onion with all the other ingredients but the onion is almost invisible, just a translucent little gem in there, like you can see in the picture above.

Here's Chef John's video, watch it if you have a chance he's so funny!



***Chef John's Ingredients, watch his video above for instructions***

Ingredients for 4 portions:
2 tsp vegetable oil
2 or 3 boneless skinless chicken breasts, about 1 1/4 lbs
salt and pepper to taste
1 large onion
4 cloves garlic
1 tbsp ancho chili powder
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp chipotle chili powder
1/4 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp flour
about 3 cups chicken broth or stock, divided
1 tsp fine cornmeal
2 cans (15oz) white beans
cayenne to taste
1/4 tsp sugar or to taste
1/3 cup chopped green onions
sour cream and cilantro to garnish

I used the toppings he recommended, cilantro, sour cream, chopped green onions and I added chopped jalapenos. I am loving making soup! More soups to come!

 

2 comments:

  1. I like the looks of yours better than the chef's, although I am sure that I don't have enough fire brick in my stomach to eat either one. Yours looks very good though.

    I will behave myself and keep my comments less Tolstoyan than yesterday. Could you imagine me on Twitter? I would go stark raving mad. If it can't be said in more than 500 words, it is not worth saying.

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    1. Thank you for liking mine better. Mine is more soupy which gave it a better color. Just leave out all the powdered peppers and use black pepper and you should be ok. It was a tad spicy.

      Yeah, twitter is so not for you! I don't get twitter anyway. I have an account but never really use it. My sister says I'm too wordy myself.

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