Riverside Ovens
Text Kitchen

It seems like it would be hard living without a stand-by chicken soup recipe.  When the mood strikes for comfort food, what's better than the brothy, noodley, concoction for a case of the winter chills?  I've gravitated back again to the same Family Cookbook Recipe which is simple, quick, and open for as many add-ons to the recipe list as there are flavors of choice.  The base starts off with sautéed onions, carrots and celery that is boiled in 6 cups of chicken broth, adding a cooked chicken, and then a curly pasta.  This is all easy enough -- all of it cooks well under half an hour and the broth in its own right turns out worth the time spent cooking.  But I always like to change up the type of chicken placed in the soup and I like to take a look in the refrigerator to see if there are other ingredients that might add texture, taste, or both.

This time around, along with the initial sautéed onions, I went ahead and added chopped baby bella mushrooms, knowing that chicken and broth are favorite matches for mushrooms, which I always feel, once cooked down, add a distinct subtle earthiness to just about anything and a great soft chunky

texture.  I cooked a dark chicken this time around, what are now called chicken tenders, well seasoned by paprika. Not only do I like the subtle bite of paprika, but I felt like it would affect the coloration of the soup as well, adding some depth of aroma.  By the time you add the cooked chicken broth to the vegetables and begin to boil, really the sky is the limit as to when to add the cooked chicken itself or the pasta. At this point, this time around, I had also decided to dice up skin-on red potatoes, and set them in the mixture to heat together in the broth, not too long though that the potatoes totally lose their structure.

For the pasta I chose what is called a multi-colored rotini, again adding color and texture.  I continued to test for tenderness of the pasta and for the softness of the cooked chicken.  Oils began to rise up through the broth, giving it that depth of released fat from the chicken.  We added some chips of basil

from our indoor planter over the top.  We cut up several Mediterranean Focaccia buns and used these on the side for dipping.  For this batch, the standard operation of onion and vegetable, broth, chicken, and pasta were there, but each slightly different than the time before.  In the end, we liked the mushrooms and paprika the best!