My littles are sick and whenever they are this is our go-to meal – Homemade Gluten Free Chicken Soup. It’s a process to make this soup, but I find it’s really worth it. One soup will make huge batch that we can enjoy for at least 2 days. When we aren’t under the weather and just have a soup craving, I make the soup for a single meal and reserve half the broth and half the cooked chicken for later use (pot pie recipe coming soon). But since my kids aren’t well, I’ll keep this soup as is for the next few days to give us all lots of amazing vitamins and help us get over this little bug.
Like I said, this soup is a process. It may take a bit of time, but it’s fairly easy to do. First step in making our Homemade Gluten Free Chicken Soup is just to add a whole chicken to a pot with the peeled whole carrots, garlic, onion cut in half, celery, bay leaves, salt and pepper kernels. Next, cover the ingredients with water and bring to a slow simmer. The simmer step is really important – it’s crucial you don’t let your ingredients come to a rolling boil. I usually place the filled pot on high then when everything starts to get hot (but before it actually boils) I reduce the heat to low and watch to see a very gentle boil / low simmer. Once you’ve got the simmer right cook the soup for 1.5 – 2 hours. If foamy bubbles form you can skim the top of your soup (remove the impurities with a spoon) but to be honest, I skip this step and just let it simmer as is.
After 1.5 – 2 hours make sure your chicken has reached an internal temperature of 165 degrees F and remove from heat. Strain everything through a metal strainer and set the ingredients aside – let your chicken cool out of the broth (10min).
At this point, you should have a bowl of just broth and a whole bunch of veggies mixed with bay leaves and peppercorns. Your chicken should be resting on a plate on its own. You’re so close to enjoying your own Homemade Gluten Free Chicken Soup! When your chicken has cooled to the touch (10min) remove all of the bones, wings and skin (but if you like bone broth don’t throw the bones away) you can remove the bones and skin by going through the chicken with a fork and your hands. Set chicken meat aside. Here’s a video Bon Appetit made that goes over how to carve a chicken. The folks at BA left some bones on the final product but you should go ahead and remove all of the bones for this soup; https://youtu.be/U3OvdvgMKs8
*for anyone who wants to keep their bones and make bone broth at a later date, let the bones cool completely and freeze in a plastic bag for future use (look out for bone broth recipe soon). Here is what my chicken yielded;
Cut chicken into bite sized pieces. Separate out the carrots, celery and onion and discard the peppercorns, garlic and bay leaves. Cut the carrots, celery and onion into bit sized pieces and to this add frozen peas and corn. The result should be something similar to this;
Next, in a separate pot, boil your gluten free noodles. We use GoGo Quinoa Fusilli noodles.
Add the chopped vegetables and chicken back to the broth and let the soup come to a light boil. Add salt and pepper if required and serve with cooked noodles. *Note; we add a few spoonfuls of the cooked noodles to our individual bowls right before we eat instead of combining the noodles to the main pot of soup. Adding noodles too quickly (especially if you are planning for leftovers) will cause the noodles to grow and grow and suck up all your broth – a fun experiment – but not so soupy =).
