Mayberry Monday: Cream of Chicken Soup.
Welcome to "Mayberry Monday" at The Wild Haven!
This is not a teaching blog. I’m not here to show you how things are done, to impart my “wisdom”, or to tell you why my lifestyle is better than yours. This is a diary of sorts, where I document the different things I’m learning as I strive to be more self-sufficient, more homegrown, and less wasteful.
My family loves The Andy Griffith Show. If you don’t know what that is, stop reading and go look it up! One of my favorite things about that era is the slow living. The Front porch rocking, guitar picking, pie baking, laundry on the clothesline living. It’s my dream.
Slow, intentional living. That’s the life I’m striving for.
Less time sitting in traffic, more time walking barefoot in the grass.
I want my kids to know how to grow their own food, cook from scratch, raise chickens and dairy cows, sew, bake, and enjoy the simple life. But, in order for me to teach them these things, I have to learn them myself. That's what I’m doing here.
Every week, I work on one or two items from my ever-growing list of things I want to learn. Sometimes it works beautifully, and sometimes I crash and burn! But I've started to document this mission, so every Monday you’ll get to read about my Mayberry Challege. You're welcome to join me in this challenge (Find my list here!) or sit back and laugh as I make a mess of this mission! I'm happy to entertain! =)
Let's jump in! Last week, I decided it was time to stop buying canned Cream of Chicken Soup. I use this for a lot of my recipes right now, so I’m always stocking up on cans at the grocery store. It’s time to take this off the grocery shopping list and add it to the homemade list!
I've been buying jars slowly over the last few years in preparation for making and (hopefully) canning my own food. I'll admit, it felt very "Mayberry" to see my finished product in a glass mason jar instead of a store-bought tin can!
It's the little things, people.
I researched a dozen recipes, and realized they are all about the same. So, I read up on the process, and made up my own recipe using the ingredients I had on hand and omitting the things my family doesn’t care for (does anyone actually like celery salt???)
Here's the recipe I came up with:
5 Tbs Butter
1/2 Cup All Purpose Flour
2 Cups Homemade Bone Broth (or chicken stock)
1 Chicken Bouillon Cube
1 Cup Whole Milk (tempered in microwave for 30 seconds)
1/4 tsp Onion Powder
1/4 Tsp Garlic Powder
1/4 Tsp Paprika
1/4 Tsp Course Sea Salt
1/4 Tsp Black Pepper
One thing I learned while doing this is that it needs to be constantly whisked. I quickly swapped out my basic whisk for this one. The more pointed edge made it so easy to scrape out the edges of the pot and keep everything smooth. If you don't have a whisk like this, you might want to have a spatula or wooden spoon on hand to get the edges.
Here's the basic process:
Warm the milk for 30 seconds to avoid curdling when adding to the saucepan.
Melt the butter in the saucepan on medium heat. Melt completely and until it starts to foam slightly.
Slowly add in the flour, and don't stop whisking. It will start to look grainy.
Remove from heat.
Start slowly stirring in the bone broth (or stock) stirring constantly.
Add in the bouillon cube, milk (slowly), and seasonings, stirring continuously.
Return to the burner and heat until it just starts to boil, stirring often.
Whisk continuously until it starts to get pretty thick. Then remove from heat.
The soup will thicken more as it sits. Let it sit for five minutes, then stir and transfer to jar or container.
This made around 24oz of soup. I used 16oz immediately in the casserole I made for dinner and put the rest in the fridge to see how long it would last.
This turned out really well. The soup itself could have used more salt, so I'll probably up the amount next time, but overall, I'm happy with how it turned out! I call this one a win.
Realistically, I'll probably still buy canned soup for a while until I can batch make this and figure out long-term storage. I haven't started trying to can things yet, so right now I'm just storing in the fridge or freezer.
I loved using real ingredients I had on hand
and knowing that I was skipping all the junk that comes in the store-bought soups. Win.
But I definitely don't want to spend 30 minutes making soup every time I want to throw a casserole together! I think this will be amazing once I learn to can it!
The hashbrown casserole was a hit!
Thanks for following along with what I'm learning! If you want to see more, subscribe or check back next week for another Mayberry Monday post!