Crockpot Cream of Chicken with Rice Soup

The secret to making good crockpot chicken soup is in the meat

Cream of Chicken Soup

I love to use the crockpot to make an easy chicken soup recipe. But making it the traditional way, with the chicken on the bone, always ends up creating a stringy mess. The meat just seems to fall apart into tiny shreds.

I’m a real fan of the ‘set it and forget it’ mentality, so I’ve finally solved this problem with a low-fat version that tastes great. I just use lean, boneless, skinless breasts of chicken meat. This particular soup recipe is gluten, dairy, and corn free. It is also Feingold approved too. This chicken soup recipe only takes about 30 minutes to prepare,  and takes about 6 hours to cook.

Ingredients:

1 cup water (or more if you’d like) I make my soups pretty thick, so if you like them more brothy you may want to add an additional cup.

1 1/4 lbs of boneless skinless chicken breasts (diced)

1 quart container 365 brand organic vegetable broth (sold at Whole Foods)

1 medium yellow onion (diced)

2 stalks of celery (diced)

4 cups of baby peeled carrots (sliced)

3 tablespoons of your favorite Thickener

NOTE: We use gluten-free flour mix (I use Betty Hagman’s recipe: 2 parts rice flour, 2/3 part potato starch, 1/3 part tapioca flour)

2 heaping tablespoons of dried parsley flakes

1/4 teaspoon white pepper

2 cloves of fresh garlic, diced

1 tablespoon of fresh squeezed lemon (the juice of one lemon)

1 teaspoon dried basil

1 teaspoon dried oregano

salt to taste if you’d like

1/2 cup of uncooked white Arborio rice (we like Lundberg brand)

Directions:

Prepare all ingredients and pour all but the rice into a 2 quart crockpot. Cook on high heat for 4 to 5 hours. Add rice and cook an additional 45 minutes. (You can add the rice earlier if you wish, but I prefer to add it later as the rice tends to soak up much of the liquid and turns the soup into more of a stew. You can also omit the rice if you’d like. Turn off heat and let it sit 15 minutes before serving. Enjoy! This dish serves 6-8.