Chicken Rice Soup

I sampled four canned chicken soups while too sick to cook, and I was not crazy about any of them. The healthiest (lower sodium) version tasted like not much, the next had a strong sodium aftertaste, one had too much celery- if you are on the BRAT diet, you don’t want any celery at all- and the other two were just blah. I did like the carrot rounds in one of them. I was surprised that the majority of contents was rice, with microscopic amounts of chicken.

Now that I’m feeling better, I decided to try and make a chicken rice soup to beat the canned versions. I found an interesting recipe but didn’t have all the ingredients on hand- now, there’s a shock! So I cobbled together my own version like this:

Sautee ½ an onion (chopped) in a tablespoon or two of olive oil for several minutes. Add 8-12 ounces of mushrooms and 2 cloves of garlic, minced. Stir every few minutes until onions reach your preferred done-ness. Add ½ teaspoon each of cumin and chili powder, 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce, and 1 tablespoon of steak sauce. Mix, then add 4 cups of water and 2 vegetable or chicken bullion (if you don’t have bullion or prefer, use 4 cups chicken or vegetable broth). Add 12-16 ounces of chicken- I put it in raw and boiled the water until the chicken was done. I also added 10 ounces of spinach.

I had cooked rice separately the day before, and added it to the bowl of soup directly. Much tastier than the canned versions!