Easy Chicken Soup Recipe

It’s that time of year, when the weather turns colder, the leaves change color and warm soup becomes a desirable thing.

Basic Ingredients

2-4 lbs of chicken thighs
Coconut Oil
2-3 inches of fresh ginger root (pealed and chopped, if you prefer to remove the ginger at the end cut the pieces larger for ease of removal)
5-10 garlic cloves (pealed and chopped)
8-9 cups of water
1-2 tsp peppercorns
1-2 bay leaves

Optional Ingredients
1 medium onion (pealed and chopped)
sliced carrots
sliced celery
celery seeds (1/4 -1/2 tsp)
rice or noodles (I cook separately and add to bowl when serving)

looking down in to pot of chicken soup
Soup!

Cooking

  1. Using a large pot or dutch oven saute ginger, garlic, and onions(optional) in coconut oil.
  2. Add chicken thighs skin side down
  3. Add 8-10 cups of water to pot, along with bay leaves, celery seeds, and peppercorns
  4. Boil for 30-60 minutes until chicken is completely cooked. Since you are boiling, you don’t need to worry about over cooking the chicken.
  5. Remove chicken. Discard the skin and bones. Shred the meat and add it back to pot.
  6. Remove ginger if you don’t want to eat large pieces of it.
  7. Add carrots, celery, and salt to taste.

 

Serving

Either serve the soup as is, or add some cooked rice or noodles to the bowl and ladle the soup over them.  I prefer to add rice/noodles this way to avoid the rice/noodles becoming mush. This way every one gets the right noodle to soup ratio.

This recipe is very adaptable both in its initial cooking and when reheating to have a bowl.

Meal Planning and You

plated meal with vegetablesMeal planning made easy

I’m going to tell you about our families’ weekly meal plan, to make it easy for you to create your own. Our plan is not designed for weight loss, or for the treatment of disease, it’s a plan that works for us. We created this plan to help get ourselves off of the hamster wheel of “What do we make for dinner?” To automate a daily task and while leave room for creativity, save time and make shopping more efficient.

What do you need? If you copy what we do, you’ll want a good crock pot, a pan with metal grate or cooking cooling rack, a good frying pan(we love our cast iron pans), and freezer bags. Likely you’ll need more kitchen equipment, but unless this is your first time cooking at home, you’ll likely have most of the equipment.

Now you need to think for a moment, grab a notepad and jot down the 3-6 meals you always cook. The old standbys, the comfort items, and the ones you buy for every week even if you don’t have plans to make it. In our house those meals are: easy stir fry, tacos, rice beans and sausage, roasted chicken breasts, and crock pot pork roast.hand writing in journal

Next I want you to look at your weekly schedule, what are your busy days? Which days are you likely to get take-out food or delivery? Our two difficult days are Mondays and Tuesdays, we find in those evening when we get home we don’t want to cook and even the process of thinking about what to cook takes entirely too long.

Now to combine this information. Which of your regular meals cook quick with minimal prep? Crock pot meals are also low prep and tend to be ready and waiting for you when you walk in the door.

Here is our plan (consider it a sample) as you’ll need to make your own. You can use our example list to frame out your own family schedule and needs.

Monday: Rice, beans, and sausage. Minimal prep, and cooks quick.
Move a frozen crock pot meal from freezer to fridge.

Tuesday: Crock Pot Meal. In the morning, pour now thawed freezer meal into crock pot, set to hot/warm (your crockpot settings may vary), maybe add some fresh garlic or additional veggies. Done. At dinner time, possibly steam up some veggies, or serve with leftover rice. Depending on meal.
Move chicken if frozen from freezer to fridge to thaw. If already thawed consider marinating.

Wednesday: Cook the chicken meal, maybe steam some veggies, or perhaps cook it all up as a stir fry.
Move the ground beef from freezer to fridge.burrito

Thursday: Tacos!! Which in our house means spiced pan cooked ground beef served with taco fixings or just over salad. Always a favorite with our kids, most likely due to the lack of forks.

Friday: Leftovers. Everyone gets something different to use up all the leftovers in the fridge. We also evaluate what we have left and consider creating casseroles to freeze for later use.

Saturday and Sunday: Unplanned. This is when we roast whole chickens, grill steak and prepare the more time consuming meals.

Now for the hidden prep, let’s face it, many published meal plans, including ours, assume a level of prep has already happened, it just didn’t have to happen in the evening.

Meat Prep: We look for sales on cuts and types of meats that we like; and we buy more than we need for the night or the week. Then we package them up in freezer bags, with a complimenting marinade and freeze. If you don’t want to try to create your own marinade, there are plenty of products on the market that you can purchase. Due to food sensitives we look to avoid marinades that include high fructose corn syrup, yeast extract, dairy, and gluten. Our current “go to” choices are Kraft Italian Dressing, and Market Baskets organic Italian dressing. If you are trying for a low salt diet, be careful with buying pre-made marinades, check the sodium content.

Sausage: On Sunday we cook up a whole tray of sausage links in the oven on a grate with a cookie sheet. Often cookie sheets are sold with a cooling rack as a combination package. Our simple recipe is lay sausage links on grate on sheet, puncture the sausage with several small holes each so the fat can escape, and cook at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until they are done. Once cooked and slightly cooled they go into a bag in the fridge to be cut up or re-heated as needed for recipes throughout the week. As we eat lunch at home, these are easy to put into a lunch. This also means sausage for Monday’s meal is already cooked and most of the work is done.

There you have it, our family meal plan. If you’re looking to simplify your dinner habits, it’s a great basic frame work to get started. Of course your personal taste preferences can alter the plan as needed and desired. But once you get started, you’ll save a lot of time and effort that’s for sure.

Hydration

Even in the cold winter months, drinking enough water is important.  Water is critical to many physiological processes.  Water is the primary component of that fluid which helps bring nutrients in and waste products out and makes up 75-85% of most cells.  With the dryer indoor air, reduced activity and colder temperatures, you may not feel water loss as easily, even as it happens.  Water helps with the sensation of feeling full, to help reduce excessive winter comfort food snacking.

Here are a few of my tricks for getting enough water throughout the day:

1. Find water that tastes good.

Personally most tap water tastes strongly of chlorine to me, so I have a filter that helps remove those elements from the water.

2. Find a glass, bottle, container you enjoy drinking out of.  

I found most people have a favorite glass or mug to drink from.  Make sure it’s nearby and ready.  In my case I love my 8oz mason jars, so I keep one by my water filter to fill and drink anytime I walk in the kitchen.

3. Start the day with 1-2 8oz glasses of water.

4. Use an app to log water consumption.

I love statistics and objective measures.  I use Waterlogged on my phone to make sure I’m drinking at least 80 ozs a day.  Using this has helped me see what days of the week are more challenging for water consumption.

Graph of my weekly in take

 

 

 

 

 

 

What are your tips for drinking enough water?