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Budget cooking: chicken, veggie, and rice soup

 At some point last year, I bought a big pack of frozen chicken breasts. I know it was last year because I've only been buying whole chickens this year. I say "at some point" because fuck if I can remember when it was. Maybe last summer? Or Spring? It's been a long damn time. Anyway, I'm out of fresher meat, and there were two breasts left in the bag that didn't look too terrible, so I'm eating those for a couple days.

I decided to make some soup, because, yeah, it's late May and getting pretty warm in general around Memphis, but we've got thunderstorms cooling shit off, so soup didn't sound too terrible. Sticking with the veggies from my $25 Kroger run last weekend, I went with  diced radish, diced mushroom, whole cherry tomatoes, sliced carrot, diced yellow bell pepper, roughly chopped spinach, and crushed and sliced garlic for the soup. While the KISS rule is generally good to follow in any case, it is even more so with soups in my opinion. For me, it's more about the taste of the broth than the exotic diversity of your ingredients, and tasty broth really isn't difficult.

To start, I seasoned the chicken breast with salt and pepper and browned it on medium heat in my pot with a couple tablespoons of butter and a couple dashes of olive oil. It's crucial to remember that: higher heat than normal, just browning the outside. The inside of the chicken will not be cooked: do not eat it. You have been warned.

After removing the breast, I dumped in the sliced garlic, let it start browning, and then dumped in the radish, carrot, and pepper. I got them all mixed in and let them sauté for a few minutes. I didn't want them to fully cook, but a little softening (with a dash of salt, of course) was the goal.

When the veggies were juuuuust getting soft, I poured in a little bit of white wine and brought that to a simmer, then put the chicken back in, along with the tomatoes and diced mushroom. It was at that point I added hot water (just from the tap, no special heating) to make sure everything was covered and there was a little extra liquid to cook off.

The downside of soup? Waiting for everything to cook. I kept the pot bouncing back and forth between simmering and boiling until the chicken was fully cooked, but that's not the end of it.

I added in those chopped spinach leaves, mixed them into the broth, and kept it simmering until they were half wilted, at which point I dumped in three handfuls of rice. Why three? Because it seemed like the right amount. Why handfuls? Because I didn't want to pull out a measuring spoon. Why rice? Because fuck you, that's why. The chicken was cooked, the veggies were cooked, everything was ready, right?

SURPRISE, MOTHERFUCKER! It's time to add cream and pepper because cream and pepper are fucking fantastic in your soup...or sauce...or whatever else you can put them in. Stirred it all in, let it simmer for another couple minutes until everything was ready, right?

Nah, son, you know that shit ain't ready. Not yet. Now we staring to get fancy. I pulled the chicken out and used my tongs and a fork to shred it, then I dumped it all back in again. Frozen chicken dries out, so if you don't want it to have the texture of dried ass leather, you're gonna want to keep it simmering a bit longer to absorb more of that delicious liquid you've been crafting.

Maybe 5 or 10 minutes later (it can go for a while as long as your heat isn't too high), you're ready to eat. To serve, put it in a bowl. Or eat it out of the pot. I don't give a shit; it's soup. I threw a little dried up cardboard-tasting parsley on top; don't do that. If you want parsley, go fresher than some 5 year old bottle of dried green paper flakes that's been sitting on the back of the top shelf of your spice cabinet. You have been warned.

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