Recipe Notes: Hearty Cream of Chicken Soup

10 December 2019

Recipe from Cook's Illustrated All Time Best Soups, America's Test Kitchen, 2016, p. 46; also available online from Cook's Country, April 2014.

It is soup season in California, time to make some old favorites and also to try new recipes from the soup cookbook that I have been working through over the last Winter or two. Flipping through the pages of the book I can easily skip some recipes for various reasons, the use of odd ingredients or too much spice, for example. The recipe for Hearty Cream of Chicken Soup though, looked good and had none of these disqualifiers. But to see if is a winner it must pass the real tests that only happen in the kitchen and at the dinner table.

I made two modifications to the published recipe. Lacking dry sherry I substituted merlot. And I skipped the garnish of fresh chives, I couldn't justify buying a bunch of chives just for a garnish. The skin was removed from a bone-in chicken breast and the meat was seasoned with salt and pepper. The skin was cooked with a little bit of water in a Dutch oven over low heat to render the fat. The heat was then increased to medium to brown the skin. Butter and leek slices (white and light green parts only) were added to the Dutch oven and cooked until softened. Flour was stirred into the mixture and cooked. Then wine was added and cooked until it evaporated. Chicken broth, Yukon Gold potato pieces, fresh thyme sprigs, a bay leaf, and the chicken were added to the Dutch oven and simmered until the internal temperature of the chicken was 160°. Because the chicken breast was so thick it took longer to cook than predicted by the recipe and isome of it ended up well over 160° and some a little under. The chicken was removed to a plate and allowed to cool while the soup simmered, about 20 more minutes. Fat and  foam were skimmed from the surface of the soup and the chicken was shredded, discarding the bones. The chicken skin, thyme sprigs, and bay leaf were discarded. The shredded chicken and cream were stirred into the soup which was seasoned with salt and pepper and served. Total time was 2 hours 10 minutes, much of it hands off.

This soup passed the test and is worth making again! There was nothing too challenging in the preparation and the soup tastes great. It is not the best looking soup with a muddy-looking broth, but the combination of tender chicken pieces, the savory broth featuring leeks and cream, and the tender vegetables will provide several satisfying and delicious meals for the two of us.