With cold and flu season here, it is time to stock up on my chicken soup. I make a simple and easy soup! I start out with a large pot of water with a little salt and pepper. I then add my whole chicken, make sure to remove the inside goodies like neck and stuff, to the water and put on the stove top covered. I let it do its magic on the stovetop over medium heat for about two hours. I like to make my own chicken stock, well because there is nothing like homemade anything. 

While the chicken is cooking on the stovetop, I cut all of the goodies I plan on adding to my soup. Today, I peeled and cut 7 carrots, two stalks of celery, two large onions, and minced 4 garlic cloves. 

After the whole chicken is cooked in the water, I take the chicken out and let it cool for about an hour. I really make sure it’s not hot so I can pull apart all of the meat on the bones. I like to use my largest cutting board as my surface. I pull apart all the of the chicken and put it in a large mixing bowl. I carefully take the chicken off of the bone because I don’t want any tiny bones in my soup. The reason why I put all of the pulled chicken in a mixing bowl first is because I then double check that there aren’t any bones whatsoever before I add it back to my soup. 

Then, I add to my stock the vegetables that I previously cut and the pulled chicken. I then added frozen shiitake mushrooms. Shiitake mushrooms are a great immune booster! I let that cook for about another hour. 

You can add anything from tomatoes, potatoes, minced ginger, or even fresh herbs. This time I just made my chicken soup with whatever ingredients I had on hand.  Here’s another little tip, I only use organic foods for this soup. 

Finally, here’s my secret! I keep all of the Chinese soup containers from take out. I use these containers to store my chicken soup in the freezer. Each one is portioned for an individual and perfect if you want to give some to a loved one that is sick. Keeping this chicken soup on hand in my freezer is a must every winter! Then when a sniffle comes, I know I’m prepared with my own homemade chicken soup and I don’t need to order out or cook while I’m sick! Genius!