Chicken Soup with Orzo

Currently trying to wean myself off the incredibly addictive Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog. Growing up with classical music and show-tunes made this just that much better. It’s incredibly witty, stars Nathan Fillion (Probably best known for Firefly), one of my favorite sadly-canceled-to-early tv-shows) AND Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser). I’ve had a couple of the tunes stuck in my head for days and I don’t think that’ll change anytime soon (Wonder if I can drive the roommate nuts)

Whole chicken was on sale a while back so as is with a lot of the meat I buy (Probably have at least 15 pounds of various meats in the freezer), I bought it without figuring out what to do with it first. I was thinking along the lines of soy sauce chicken or just a roasted chicken, but just getting over being sick (Had some sort of stomach bug where I couldn’t eat anything, lost 5 pounds in 3 days…not good!) I decided on some chicken soup. Enter the Internet, once again and Ree from The Pioneer Woman. A couple days before (while I couldn’t eat, which was FANTASTIC I tell you), this post came up…and made my mouth water (and my stomach churn). But that didn’t stop me from thinking about it a bunch…

So one “mistake” I made was not thinking about how many people the soup would feed. I think I had a 3.5 lb chicken which, when it was all said and done, made AT LEAST 6 quarts of soup. And this was after I had 2 bowls. So maybe 7 quarts!!! That’s my motto: If you’re going to do anything, make sure you do it in excess.

Recipe adapted from The Pioneer Woman

Chicken Soup with Orzo

Time : 90 minutes – 2 hours
Serves : A lot

Ingredients:
– 1 whole chicken, quartered
– 1 lb box of Orzo pasta
– 1 medium onion, chopped
– 2-3 carrots, diced
– 2-3 stalks celery, diced
– 2 – 3 tsp salt
– 1 – 1.5 tbsp parsley flakes
– a pinch of dried thyme
– 3 – 4 tbsp flour mixed with 2 – 3 tbsp water
– 1/2 tsp Turmeric
– Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Method:
1. Put the quartered chicken in a stockpot and cover it such that the chicken is 1/2 – 1 inch below the surface. Simmer for about 30 minutes.
2. Take the chicken out of the pot and shred the chicken (by hand or with utensils), set aside. Return the bones to the pot and simmer for another 30-45 minutes.
3. Remove the bones from the broth. Watch out for the small bones that may have fallen off while simmering!
4. Add the onions, celery, and carrots followed by all of the herbs and spices. Stir occasionally for about 10 minutes.
5. In a large saucepan or stock pot, boil water (with a healthy drizzle of salt) to cook the pasta. Cook the pasta until just underdone, you want the pasta to have a little crunch to it, it’ll cook the rest of the way in the soup.
6. Add the pasta and chicken back to the soup, stirring frequently for about 5-10 more minutes.
7. Add the flour/water mixture to the soup to thicken it up a little bit.
8. Adjust flavors as necessary. I like my soup a little saltier so I added a little bit more salt (Can also use some chicken base)

NOTE: Since you’re making a LOT of soup here, you can withhold some of the pasta so that it doesn’t get saturated and soggy after being stored. Just prep the pasta again while heating up the soup and then stir it in =)