Awesomely Fantastic Slow Cooker Chicken Soup

Welcome back to this week’s edition of Sunday Scratchups, your weekly recipe from scratch around grocery sales and affordable ingredients. So, you know what’s always affordable, meat-wise? Whole chickens, that’s what! And you know who really needed some comfort food this week? Me, that’s who!

And since no one here is likely to make it for me, I went ahead and made this Awesomely Fantastic Slow Cooker Chicken Soup for myself. (Mr. 11 also put away quite a bit of it, but that’s to be expected…)

If the title of this recipe sounds vaguely familiar, well, some days you just want a bowl of awesomely fantastic homemade chicken soup but you aren’t going to be around to babysit a big pot of soup all afternoon on the stove. Here, I simply adapted that older stove top chicken soup recipe into an easy shortcut version for the Crock-Pot — and since it takes 8-10 hours to simmer, this slow cooker chicken soup is a great choice when you’re going to be out of the house all day and want to come home to an easy home-cooked meal.

This good-for-what-ails-ya soup comes out of the slow cooker with much the same great depth of flavor as the original version, but it’s a bit fattier since you don’t have as many chances to skim as when simmering it on the stove. (If this bothers you, simply refrigerate the soup for a while and then skim off the top layer of fat before reheating and serving the soup.)

Awesomely Fantastic Slow Cooker Chicken Soup

Ingredients

1 medium yellow onion, chopped
5 whole carrots, peeled and chopped
3 celery stalks, chopped
2 Tbsp minced garlic
1 Tbsp thyme
1 Tbsp parsley
1.5 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp cayenne (omit or cut back, if sensitive to spice)
Sea salt, to taste
Black pepper, to taste
3.5-5 lb whole chicken (you’ll have extra cooked chicken to shred for another recipe if you use a 5-pounder!)
8 cups water
1 bay leaf

Directions

Spread veggies out across the bottom of a 6-8 quart slow cooker. Add garlic, and season vegetables with thyme, parsley, turmeric, cayenne, sea salt, and black pepper. Place the whole chicken on top of the veggies (remove and discard giblets first, if present). Pour in water and throw in the bay leaf.

Cook on low for 8-10 hours, then turn the Crock-Pot off, discard the bay leaf, and carefully remove chicken from the crock onto a rimmed baking sheet (it will be falling apart). Let the chicken cool for 10-15 minutes, then shred chicken, discarding skin, bones, and cartilage.

Skim any accumulated fat off of the soup and return the shredded meat back to the soup. (See Note.) Taste soup and add additional salt & pepper, if desired, then serve.

Note: If you use a larger chicken, you can reserve some of the cooked shredded meat for another dinner later — My chicken was a little over five pounds, and I returned about 2/3 to the soup and was able to freeze 1/3 for other uses. Bonus! 🙂

What makes this soup “awesomely fantastic?”

Chicken soup is not the quintessential comfort food by accident, right? This is the soup you want when you’re feeling under the weather, or even when you’re just feeling down; just make it easy by using your Crock-Pot. Try it the next time you’re sick, or bring it to a friend in need of a little comfort.

Fantastic!

Personally, I like my chicken soup to have a lot going on — full of chicken and veggies with a lot of garlic, a lot of thyme, and some turmeric and cayenne for a bit of underlying heat. To mix things up you can also add a splash of fresh lemon juice to brighten up the flavor and/or wilt in fresh spinach right before serving, too. Awesomely fantastic slow cooker chicken soup is naturally gluten free.

Awesomely Fantastic Slow Cooker Chicken Soup, printable recipe

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Awesomely Fantastic Slow Cooker Chicken Soup

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This is the soup you want when you're feeling under the weather, or even when you're just feeling down; just make it easy by using your Crock-Pot!

Course dinner

Total Time 10 hours hours 45 minutes minutes

Servings 8

Author Rachel Singer

Ingredients

• 1 medium yellow onion, chopped
• 5 whole carrots, peeled and chopped
• 3 celery stalks, chopped
• 2 Tbsp minced garlic
• 1 Tbsp thyme
• 1 Tbsp parsley
• 1.5 tsp turmeric
• 1/2 tsp cayenne (omit or cut back, if sensitive to spice)
• Sea salt, to taste
• Black pepper, to taste
• 3.5-5 lb whole chicken (you'll have extra cooked chicken to shred for another recipe if you use a 5-pounder!)
• 8 cups water
• 1 bay leaf

Instructions

• Spread veggies out across the bottom of a 6-8 quart slow cooker. Add garlic, and season vegetables with thyme, parsley, turmeric, cayenne, sea salt, and black pepper. 
• Place the whole chicken on top of the veggies (remove and discard giblets first, if present). Pour in water and throw in the bay leaf.
• Cook on low for 8-10 hours, then turn the Crock-Pot off, discard the bay leaf, and carefully remove chicken from the crock onto a rimmed baking sheet (it will be falling apart). Let the chicken cool for 10-15 minutes, then shred chicken, discarding skin, bones, and cartilage.
• Skim any accumulated fat off of the soup and return the shredded meat back to the soup. (See Note.) Taste soup and add additional salt & pepper, if desired, then serve.

Notes

If you use a larger chicken, you can reserve some of the cooked shredded meat for another dinner later -- My chicken was a little over five pounds, and I returned about 2/3 to the soup and was able to freeze 1/3 for other uses. Bonus! 🙂

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