Chicken Soup for...Well, for Me.

I've been a whole new level of sick lately. Its been over two weeks now, and I'm waiting on a referral to the ENT for some stuff. Anyway, I decided this was a good excuse to make some chicken noodle soup. Now, admittedly, I normally would make homemade noodles and chop  celery and carrots and onion and go through the whole ordeal, but: I'm barely putting out enough energy to crochet for more than twenty minutes at a time SO I took a few shortcuts.
To start: I like to make my meat-centered soups in the slow-cooker. Slow cookers are much better at breaking down the meat while keeping in the juices and not letting it dry out. It also lets me throw in my ingredients and walk away when I'm busy or sick.

I set the slow-cooker to the "Low" setting, and let it start to warm up. Meanwhile, I take half of a large sweet onion (Vidalia are my favorite) and I mince it. I toss it into a pan with a couple of pats of butter and start to saute them. In with the onions while they saute, I toss in my seasonings. Sage, thyme, rosemary, salt, pepper, 4 crushed chicken bouillon cubes, a pinch of garlic powder and a little celery seed. (NOT celery salt.) Once my onions are translucent and my spices are fragrant, I toss the mix into my slow cooker. I also add in one can of cream of chicken soup and the remainder of the stick of butter.

I don't personally like to use too much white meat in soups and dumplings. White meat can be dry or tough, even in the slow cooker, not to mention the fats/skins/bones of the dark meat add more flavor to the soup, SO I mix white and dark.  This time, I had a package of chicken thighs and a very large chicken breast. Four thighs, and one breast the size of two is plenty of chicken for the soup. And as a sidenote: Chicken thighs are super easy to bone and skin, so never pay the extra cost for boneless skinless unless they are just really on sale.


 Now all I do is let that mix slow cook for about 2-3 hours. The chicken will be cooked by then and you can remove it with tongs. Let it cook for a few minutes on a plate, then debone it and shred or cut it up. It should fall off the bone and break up easily. I like to leave the tiny pieces of skin in, but if you don't want them, toss the skin with the bones. Mix the chicken and all the juices off the plate back into the mixture in your slow-cooker. I then cheated and added in a can of carrots and a bag of flat, wide, egg noodles and mixed it up. I was a little woozy at this point, so no picture, but instead, here is a picture of my adorably concerned dog taking care of me while I am sick!

 Let the noodles soak up the broth for 30 minutes (I let mine go an hour because I like squishy noodles) and then enjoy. :) It hit the spot and took little to no effort and minimal clean up.