Cream of Chicken Soup and Garlic Bread

Everyone loves a nicely done slice of garlic bread, and no one would deny that it is even nicer to have a beautiful bowl of creamy chicken soup to dip it in. It was a pretty chilly winter afternoon when I decided that 'damn, I want some chicken soup for dinner tonight!', so i decided to look up so recipes. Googling chicken soup will net you thousands of results, which is why i went through a few looking at their common ingredients used across different recipes and decided to have a go at it myself without really following. It involves quite a bit of work but it was all worth it in the end, trust me!


The most important part of chicken soup is the chicken stock that makes it, so we'll start with my version of chicken stock made specifically to prepare the soup. Usually only chicken carcasses will be used, but since the soup needed some chicken meat, I used drumsticks. First, clean about a kilo of drumsticks and marinate it with some lea&perrins sauce, soy sauce, and white pepper.


After leaving the drumsticks alone for 10-15 minutes, pan fry them to give them colour on all sides. The flesh need not be cooked as the boiling will take care of it, so remove the chicken as soon as they smell fragrant and there is sufficient color on the skin and flesh. Place them in a big pot.


Chop up around 3-4 carrots depending on size.


Then chop up a 3-4 sticks of celery.


Cut up two large brown onions. I used smaller ones because I ran out of onions.


Smash 5-6 cloves of garlic up.


Chuck all the carrots, celery, onions and garlic into the same pot as the drumsticks.


Fill the pot up with water and bring it to a boil and leave it for around 50mins to an hour with the cover on before switching the fire off.


After letting the stock cool down, removed the drumsticks and set them aside in a bowl. Remove all the others.


Let the drumsticks cool and peel them into small pieces which we will use later.


Slice some button mushrooms out. I used around 5-600grams.


The pan that was used to fry the chicken. Don't clean the residue off as it will add some flavor to the mushrooms.


Fry the mushrooms and set them aside.


Melt a big chunk of non-salted butter/spread on a non-stick pan. I used around 40% of a standard sized margarine-type container.


After the spread has melted and starts to bubble, slowly pour some flour in and stir the mixture around. The flour added should be around 80% of the spread used. Continue stirring it until it reaches the consistency as shown in the picture.


Add around 200-250ml of cream into the mixture and continue stirring.


Continue stirring until it reaches this consistency.


Pour the mixture into the pot with the stock. My mistake was not bringing the stock to a boil first as it has cooled down over time, which is why the following happened.


The whole thing kind of coagulated. Took slightly longer to melt everything down again.


Chuck the peeled meat and the fried mushrooms into the pot and continue boiling it for around 15-20 minutes while constantly stirring it.


It should look like this after a while.


Cut up some garlic and put it in the blender.


Add a healthy sprinkle of italian herbs. I ran out of fresh ones so bottled ones will have to do.


Add in some cut blocks of butter.


The ratio should be like this.


Blend it good!


Spread the butter over some bread and oven toast it for 5 minutes.


Dip it in the creamy soup and munch away.


Leftovers can be kept in containers and left in the fridge or be frozen for another day. I like to separate them into portions for convenience sake.