Sept. 29

I had three hours today where I wasn't working (why do I have two jobs again?), but thankfully that was all I needed to make up some chicken and wild rice soup! I have had this planned for quite some time and I'm so glad I finally got to cook it. I used the simplest recipe I could find from HERE, but ended up editing it a bit.

6 c Chicken Broth (I only had two cans of broth, so I used water for the rest)

2 Chicken Breast Halves, cooked and cubed

6 oz pkg Uncle Ben's Long Grain and Wild Rice Blend-Original Recipe

1/2 tsp Salt

1/2 tsp Ground Black Pepper

1 c All-Purpose Flour

12 Tbsp Butter (I only used 8 Tbsp because I thought more than one stick was a bit extravagant)

1/2 c Carrots, diced  (I didn't have any vegetables on hand.... I wish I would have had an onion at least)

1/2 c Celery, diced

1/2 c Onions, diced

3 c Heavy Cream (I used a pint of half and half and subbed milk for the third cup)

1. Open rice, pull out seasoning packet and set aside.

2. In a small bowl, combine salt, pepper and flour. Set aside.

3. In a large pot over medium heat, combine broth and chicken. Bring to a boil, then stir in rice. Cover and remove from heat.

4. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, melt butter. Add carrots, celery and onion and saute for 5 minutes. Stir in contents of seasoning packet, and continue cooking vegetables until softened, about 5 minutes more. Add seasoned flour gradually while constantly stirring, to form a roux. Saute roux for 3-4 minutes to cook out raw flour taste.

5. Whisk in cream, a little at a time, until fully incorporated and smooth. Cook until thickened, 5 minutes.

6. Stir cream mixture into broth and rice. Cook over medium heat until heated through and rice is done,15-20 minutes.

First of all, I have no idea what a roux is. In hindsight I probably should have looked that up, as I didn't use all of my flour mixture because my 'roux' was getting extremely thick.... like chunky paste thick. Is that was it's supposed to look like? I even put some of the chicken broth that was boiling on the other burner in it to try and get some more liquid. I assume it is because I didn't use all of the butter?

Regardless of how well I made the roux, the soup turned out heavenly. I was even inspired to go to Checkers in an attempt to find sourdough suitable for bread bowls. I was unsuccessful, but I did get little sourdough rolls that I could at least dip into the soup.

Here is the result. I was most pleased and am excited to eat more tomorrow.