Sunday's Soup

You should have seen the look on my husband's face when I told him that I would be making Chicken and Dumplings today. For any of you who look forward to a vegetarian or pseudo vegetarian soup, I'm disappointing you, but I've made my husband, as well as my dogs very happy. The dogs won't get the soup, but they will get some bits from the chicken in their dish tonight. Dog heaven!!!
Now I said Chicken and Dumplings. Over the last two weeks, I've shared a couple of my favorite soups and my shortcuts to making them. I have a shortcut today as well, it's the dumplings. Rather than making real dumplings, I love to use flour tortillas. If you've never tried this, they are wonderful.
So my cheater version of

Chicken and Dumplings 

the ingredients;

3 pounds of chicken legs, skin on

1 large chicken breast

3 stalks of celery chopped

1 large onion chopped

2 cloves of garlic minced

1 pound of carrots sliced

1/2 cup of chopped parsley

1 teaspoon of dried sage

salt and pepper to taste

1 package of flour tortillas

Begin by placing chicken legs and breast in large pot. I like to use chicken legs as they have so much flavour and I like to offset the dark meat with a little white meat so I throw in a breast. Add the chopped celery, onion and garlic. Cover with water. The water should just cover the ingredients.

Bring to a boil and cook until chicken is beginning to fall off the bone. Remove the chicken from the pot and allow to cool.  Once it is cool, remove the chicken from the bones and pull into bit sized pieces.

Add carrots to the pot while the chicken is cooling. Add approximately 4 cups of water. Bring to a boil. Once boiling reduce heat and continue to cook until carrots are tender. Add the chopped parsley and the dried sage. If you don't like sage, omit.

Once the chicken is ready, add it back to the pot. At this point you basically have a pot of chicken soup. Salt and pepper the soup to taste.  

Cut up the tortillas into nice sized strips, maybe 2" long by 1" wide. You may need to add more water at this point. Remember, the tortillas will thicken the soup, so if there is not enough liquid in the pot, the soup will become much too thick. Just for guidance, once my chicken had cooked, I added 4 cups of water as I cooked the carrots. Before I added the tortillas, I added 4 more cups of water.
Bring the soup to a boil. While the soup is boiling, add the tortillas a little at the time, stirring between additions. Once all of the pieces have been added, allow to cook for a few minutes.    

Turn the heat off and ladle up the soup. My husband has already had a bowl and he said, "This is a winner!" I don't know if the soup is all that good or if he is just happy to be getting some meat!!!

A soup that is good for the soul!
Hope you're having a lovely Sunday.
Rhonda
By the way, I moved all of my soups to a designated Soup board on Pinterest. If you would like to see all of the soups that I have done, you can find them here,   http://pinterest.com/sewbussted/soups/.