Chicken Soup for the Soul
Gut healing creamy chicken soup
Equipment
- 1 Large pot
Ingredients
- 1 Whole chicken, chicken pieces, or whole chicken with the breasts removed *see notes
- Just enough water to cover the chicken in the pot
- 4-6 Carrots, diced
- 1 Large white onion, diced
- 4 Celery stalks, chopped
- 1 Tbs Poultry seasoning, dried or fresh ( mixture of sage, thyme marjoram and rosemary)
- 1 Cup Fresh or frozen green peas
Instructions
- The first step is to prepare your chicken. See notes on best pieces to use.* I like to rinse off my chicken before adding to my pot. Then I add just enough water to cover all of the chicken. You don't want too much, or your soup will have a "watered down" flavour.
- Bring your cooking water to a boil.
- Remove any scum that rises to the surface.
- Cover and let reduce to a very low simmer for 1.5- 2 hours.
- Let cool enough to handle your chicken. Remove the chicken from your pot and take all of the meat off the bones. See notes on how to use up the skin and soft tissue.
- Now you can add in your diced carrots and onions as well as your celery, if using. You can also add your dried or fresh herbs (see notes for GAPS into instructions). Let simmer on low for 20 minutes.
- Now you can add in your chicken and your fresh or frozen peas.
- Serve and enjoy!
Notes
I find that if I cook a whole chicken to make stock, my chicken breasts get very dry! You can watch YouTube videos to help in showing you how to butcher a chicken. The basic idea here is just to cut the breasts off of the bone. It doesn't have to be pretty. I then use the chicken breasts in other recipes, like chicken fried cauliflower rice!
I like to take off all the skin and any soft tissue and place it in my blender. I then blend with some of the stock and add it all back into the pot. This makes the soup nice and creamy. Other times I just add the skin into the soup and eat it. This is personal preference.
Fresh herbs can be used to flavour soups on GAPS introduction diet stage 1, as long as you add them in just for flavouring. You can do this by using a bit of cheesecloth or coffee filter and wrapping the herbs and tying off with a string. Put this in your soup to add flavour and take out before serving. Dried herbs are stage 6 on the GAPS introduction diet
If you're on GAPS you can add in some cultured cream, sauerkraut brine, and/or 1-2 raw egg yolks to each bowl of soup.