Minestrone Soup

I had some leftover chicken broth that I needed to use or put in the freezer so I decided to make life easier on me today and made a soup in the crock pot. I normally make this soup or a version of it on the stove but I thought I would utilize the crock pot so that dinner would be ready without me having to get in there ahead of time to prepare it.  

Minestrone Soup
Chicken Broth (I used all the broth that resulted from one rotisserie chicken carcass)
ground turkey (cooked prior to adding)
1 can corn
1 can stewed tomatoes
1 can beans (I use either kidney beans, black beans or pinto beans depending on what I have on hand)
diced onion
1 tsp basil
1 tsp oregano
2 tsp chopped garlic
orzo (I prefer orzo but I've also used rice and other types of pasta if that's all I have on hand)

Homemade Chicken Stock

Every time we go to Costco we usually pick up one of their rotisserie chickens since they are only $5 and can be so many meals for us. Once I have removed all the chicken from the carcass I will make chicken stock with it. I start by boiling water with the chicken carcass in the pot. I add a few seasonings, depending on my mood or plan for the chicken stock. Once it begins to boil I turn it down to a simmer and there it sits for about 4 hours.

If I plan to use it immediately or within a day or two I put it in a plastic container and put it in the fridge. If I am going to save it, I put it in a plastic bag and throw it in the freezer with the date it was created on it. This is by far my favorite way to use chicken broth for my recipes because it tastes SO much better, plus it was really inexpensive and I am all about that. YUM!

Random Chicken Soup

I call this Random Soup because I pretty much just grabbed some things that I have in my house and put them together. My kids are complete opposites when it comes to eating. T is super picky and will hardly touch anything I make but K is much more willing to try whatever I am eating. All the items I chose for this soup are things K likes so that helped lead the direction of what went in (besides the fact that I was grabbing things that I had in the kitchen).

I started with some frozen chicken stock that I had made a couple weeks ago from a Costco rotisserie chicken. Then I cut up some tomatoes and onions. I let them cook for a bit before I put in the black beans and corn. When I felt that the soup was simmering well enough and that it only had about 10 or so minutes left to cook I put in the uncooked bag of alphabet pasta. I followed the directions and let it cook for about 10 minutes. This made the soup turn pretty thick because the pasta noodles soaked up a lot of the chicken stock (so if you like your soup more soupy, you might want to cook your noodles by themselves ahead of time and then just put them in the mixture). I then shredded the drained chicken and let it simmer for a few more minutes until the chicken was warm.

It was pretty hot when I put it in the bowl so I separated some for K into a smaller bowl and let it cool in the freezer for a couple minutes. He devoured it and then wanted some of mine! So I was happy with the results. It wasn't the fanciest of soups (which most of my food isn't very fancy, it's just food that we like) but it was a pleaser for K and I.  T actually ate a handful of the black beans from the soup so I scored a few points there.

My measurements on this one are pretty vague because like I mentioned above it was made up of items I had in the house.  

Random Chicken Soup
1 container of chicken stock
1 tomato diced
1/2 medium onion diced
1 can black beans drained
1 can corn drained
1 bag (7oz) alphabet pasta uncooked
1 can peas drained
1 can cooked chicken breast drained and shredded
Dash of Parsley and Garlic Powder