Chicken and Wild Rice Soup

I LOVE SOUP. I inherited the "love of soup" gene from my maternal grandfather who eats soup with almost every meal. seriously. I have a Pinterest board dedicated to soups, and there's also lots of soup cross over with my board for crock-pot recipes.

Soup is an easy lunch to pack for work and I like to make a big pot on the weekend so I have something to last the week.

This weekend's recipe winner was:

Chicken and Wild Rice Soup from "mmmcafe's" blog:

http://mmmcafe.blogspot.com/2010/12/chicken-and-wild-rice-soup.html

A new year always brings thoughts of healthier eating, but this soup does not follow that train of thought! To start with, I was skeptical about using an entire stick of butter...not to mention the cream. But, I love chicken and rice soups so I gave it a whirl anyway.

The recipe calls for chicken stock but we didn't have any so I just made my own. I threw in some extra seasonings which probably made this taste different than "mmmcafe's" version, but I like all the seasonings I threw in so I wasn't complaining ;o)

I followed the recipe well until I got distracted in conversation and put the chicken in too early. I think this mis-step is to blame for the lack of thickening that the recipe claimed would happen. Otherwise, everything worked out well and was finished rather quickly. I would estimate the entire process was less than an hour of work, which is very impressive for soup prep!

And, my foodie sister gave rave reviews, so that has to count for something, right?!

Here's an overview of the pot:

And here's a close up of a delicious spoonful!

I like my soups chunky instead of runny, but I still had to almost double the liquid that the recipe called for. yikes! Also, when I make this again I will definitely cut out at least half (if not more!) of the butter. The sautéing veggies were swimming in butter which didn't seem at all necessary. I think I will also try using skim milk instead of heavy cream to make this a creamy soup, or else I'll just leave the dairy out all together and have a clear broth. I don't think it added enough to the flavor to warrant the extra calories.

Overall the verdict is definitely positive from everyone who ate this soup but there is room for improvement!