Chicken and Cilantro Mini Wonton Soup with Vegetables

Yes, it has been a long time but with being furloughed during the Covid19 pandemic I felt it time to reconnect.   I am starting out with a lovely, heartwarming soup that I have made a few times.  It uses the wonderful Bibigo mini wontons, some veggies, homemade stock and what ever seasoning you prefer.

I start out with your basic vegetable mix of onions, carrots and celery. I typically add some fresh garlic and sometimes some crushed red pepper.

 Then I add some of lovely wife's homemade chicken stock and bring it to a simmer. While we use homemade stock you certainly can used purchase stock or broth. However, homemade stock really takes any good soup and makes it into a great one.

Now the Bibigo mini wontons come in a resealable 3 pound bag as seen below.

 Here is a shot of them out of the bag.

I then add the wontons and simmer until they are cooked. I often season the soup with parsley flakes and the wonderful Malabar Pepper from Costco. But it really depends on your mood and you can shake it up however you like.

This  soup is easy, tasty and comforting.  This soup is always a good one to make but in these trying times its simplicity and wholesome really make it stand out.  I know we will continue to keep this a regular in our household.  

Enjoy and be safe and well!

A Chicken Soup With Quinoa: Grandma's Home Cooking Meets A Bolivian Staple

My wife had a couple of long nights in a row with concert rehearsals and she told me in advance for her night off she wanted comfort food.

Few foods are as comforting as chicken soup so I quickly settled on that for dinner. Since she gave me warning, I pulled some of our frozen chicken from Costco out of the freezer the night before and put it in the fridge to thaw.

When I got home from work, I pulled out our big soup pot and drizzled in some EVOO. I then added a generous helping of Christopher Ranch Chopped Garlic we get from Costco and a small palmful of rosemary I crumbled in my hand.  Meanwhile, my wonderful wife chopped:

• 1 small yellow onion
• 2 stalks of celery
• 1 cup of baby carrots

These were added to the pot and I sauteed them until the onions were tender. While this was going on my wife thawed out a couple of quarts of homemade chicken stock and added that to the pot while I tossed in the somewhat thawed chicken.

She then rinsed a half cup Nature's Earthly Choice Quinoa  and threw that in the pot with about a cup of boiling water.  We brought everything to a boil then turned it to a simmer for about 15 minutes to cook the quinoa.

This dish was absolutely a home run!  It was a delicious, healthy, hearty chicken soup with lots of comfort but it also had a distinct character.

Rosemary and chicken are a natural combination and while parsley is a great seasoning for chicken soup, the rosemary gave it a bit of panache.  Also, the garlic helped give it a more varied and hearty flavor profile.

And finally, the use of quinoa instead of noodles gave it a twist without making it so out of the ordinary it was no longer comfort food.

And by using all the foods we had in a cupboard, fridge and freezer, this went together in very little time with minimal effort.

In every way this dish was a success:

• Taste
• Ease
• Cost
• Comfort

I am positive we will do something like this again and it only reaffirms our strategy for rotisserie chickens.