Grandma's Cream of Chicken Soup

Grandma’s Cream of Chicken Soup

1 whole chicken
water
½ cup chicken bouillon granules
3 large potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 stalk of celery, diced fine
1 carrot, diced fine
1 large onion, minced
16 oz (2 cups) sour cream
thickening (flour and water, or whatever you prefer)

This is the type of recipe my mother (Grandma) would call “by guess and by golly”, meaning that I watched her make it and wrote it down while she did it. I made it again myself with her sitting in her wheelchair in my kitchen and she pronounced it the same. That’s as good as it got for us. I use a crock-pot for some of this recipe since it frees me up a lot.

Put a whole chicken (without giblets or neck) in a large (5 to 6 qt—I like 6) Crock-Pot. Add water until about an inch or two short of the top. Put in the ½ cup bouillon. Yup, seriously, a half a cup. Well, maybe a 1/3 if you are using a 5 qt. Let cook, on high about 5 or 6 hours, on low you can cook it all day. My favorite method is to put it in on Low last thing before I go to bed at night and then when I get around to it in the morning or early afternoon it’s all ready. The broth is your soup base. I do the rest on the stove since it’s faster, but you can do it all in the Crock-Pot. Chicken is done when it falls off the bone.

Remove chicken (and any bones) from broth. Set chicken aside to cool. Pour broth into a large pot. Taste to see if it’s too salty, if it is, add a little water (but I don’t usually have to). It should taste like good, ready to use chicken broth. Add potato, celery, carrot, and onion. (I use a food processor and put the onion, celery and carrot in together and process in pulses until it’s all finely diced.) Boil/simmer vegetables in broth until the potato is done. When the vegetables are cooked to your desired doneness, add thickening just as you would to gravy and continue to cook for a minute or two until thick.

Meanwhile, skin and bone chicken and shred or cut in pieces. When soup is thickened, add chicken meat. Stir well. Remove from heat and stir in sour cream. Serve.



*This makes a good-sized pot full of soup. When re-heating leftovers, don’t bring to a full boil because the sour cream will curdle. If you are making it ahead of time to serve later or freeze, cook to the point where the chicken is added and then refigerate or freeze. When soup is heated for serving, add sour cream.
This is a family favorite and much easier than it looks with all these instructions!