Chicken Noodle Soup

No frills, nothing fancy, just down home, delicious, hearty, hot and sexy, chicken noodle soup.

 

I have this all ready to go in the freezer. I literally unpack the appropriate frozen ingredients, add to the crock pot and let it hang out as long as it wants.

 

I use my own chicken broth, I don’t buy it, ever. I’ll attach the recipe for that, I’ll be posting it soon…

 

I keep chopped onions, celery, carrots (I don’t blanch I just use small portions, they stay good in the freezer for about a month, but no longer.) shredded chicken and frozen broth in the freezer.

 

I add the veggies and chicken right to the crock pot, with about two cups of hot water and some frozen broth, which is about 16oz.

 

INGREDIENTS:

Since it’s soup, why pinpoint measurements? I never understood how you need, “3 carrots” or “1 onion”. How do YOU know what I like in my soup? So, I use about 16oz of each… I do all my portioning for freezing in solo cups, so the amounts I freeze of everything is about 16oz. It leaves enough head space in the bag for expansion for foods which do that and keeps all my portions the same.

White onion, always diced, usually frozen.
Carrots, coined and frozen.
Celery, chopped and frozen.
Sometimes, I use potatoes, diced, not frozen. That’s when I know Boo will be using it for lunches and I want to bulk up the soup a bit.
Chicken, cooked, shredded and frozen.
Broth, again, frozen.
About 2 cups, maybe 3 of hot water.
Egg noodles, about 2 cups.
Thyme, rosemary, basil, oregano, salt and pepper.

Add everything except noodles to crock pot, season well and let it simmer. It’s soup, you know how it’s done.

 

I serve it up with either homemade cheddar biscuits, which I’ll post a recipe for soon or these delicious garlic and herb biscuits.

I also got a few loaves of artisan bread at Sprouts and have kept it sliced in the freezer for quick garlic bread.

Enjoy!

San Diego Wedding…

My best friend got married on the beach in June and we all road tripped to San Diego for the most beautiful beach wedding…

Her wedding was featured on a blog about wedding bouquets in San Diego and the Maid of Honor shared it today on Facebook so I figured I’d share the link here.

http://sandiegoweddingflorist.wordpress.com/2013/08/01/hot-hot-pink-wedding-in-pacific-beach/ 

Check it out!

Pork Chile Verde

The culmination of the last two posts, I bring you the Pork Chile Verde plate!

For the sauce, click here.

For the pork and pork stock, click here.

For the refried beans and Spanish rice, click here.

Directions, assuming you’ve got your sauce ready, pork chopped, beans refried and rice is a simmerin’ are as follows:

In a medium sauce pot, depending on how much you’re making for this particular dish, combine cubed pork and the chile verde sauce and simmer on low. That’s it. Let the pork get tender and let the reduce…

Serve, plated like this with corn tortillas, or in a flour tortilla as a burrito!

Enjoy!

Chile Verde Sauce

In my last post I showed you how to make homemade pork stock from a big ole honkin’ pork ass. You can find that, here.

Today, we’re going to take that ass stock and make a whole bunch of chile verde, for the freezer.

Chile verde is a green, chile based sauce that is served over pork, usually, but is great over beef or chicken and is usually served plate style, or in a burrito. The sauce can also be used to make soup, like green chile chicken soup, which I’ll be making, soon…

The sauce can’t get any more simple. If you want to use boxed stock, feel free, it should work just fine but I’m all about the bone broth here.

INGREDIENTS:

4lb Hatch chiles
2lbs Tomatillos
1lb/4large Onions
Jalapenos, to taste, depending how spicy you want it
1 head of garlic

DIRECTIONS:

Roast all the veggies.

 

Remove the tops and stem scars from the tomatillos and chiles.

 

I usually just do an assembly line of cleaned, prepped veggies with two casserole dishes alternating in the oven, with the oven on broil.

 

As one is roasting, the other is getting blended, the empty dish filled with veggies to roast and popped in the oven by the time the other is ready to pull out, dump in the blender and repeat.

 

Blend as well as you can, don’t worry if your veggies are still crunchy, you’ll be simmering the hell out of this in just a bit…

Once everything is blended. Add it to your stock pot and grab a whisk…

I like to simmer this, on medium low, until it has no “crunch” left to it when you taste it. Uncooked, even blended veggies will produce a “raw” taste to a sauce like this. Only after you cook and reduce it for a long time, will you taste the difference when the veggies get softer and the flavors get sexy… I add pork stock, about two cups or so, as I go along to improve consistency and richen the flavor.

Add cumin, salt, black pepper and oregano to taste.

You can add cilantro at this point, but I’m not a big fan.

 

 

 

This gets bagged, tagged and frozen as well.

I use it in Pollo Verde Enchiladas and of course, for pork green chile.

That will be my next post, but here’s a little preview:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enjoy!