Clean-out-the-pantry chicken soup

I have been in a soup mood all week.  It is finally starting to get cooler in the Carolinas and there is no better cold-weather food than soup.

My cousin's wife has a really great recipe for Creamy Chicken Soup.  I never have all of the ingredients for it, but I use it as inspiration for one of my own creations.After cleaning out the pantry yesterday, I discovered that I have a lot of canned vegetables that need to be eaten.  I also had a bunch of celery in the fridge that was starting to turn soft.  The two-year-old enjoys helping out in the kitchen, so this was fun for her.

This is how we did it:

First, I thawed a couple of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, sliced them into strips and put them in a pot of boiling water with slices of the celery and some pepper.  It only took about 10 minutes for the chicken to cook.  

While the chicken was cooking, I opened cans of sliced carrots, peas and whole kernel corn  and drained them in the colander. I rinsed them well to remove the salt.  Three or four cans of Veg-All or mixed vegetables works really well if you don't have the cans of vegetables I used.  Then I dumped some leftover lima beans from yesterday's lunch into the colander.  I removed the chicken and celery from the water, poured the broth into a large bowl, and cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces.  I added the celery from the broth to the colander when the chicken finished cooking.

I put the pot back on the stove (didn't wash it from cooking the chicken) and turned the burner on to medium heat.  Then I melted half a stick of butter in the pot.  Next I added a cup of all-purpose flour (can use 1/2 cup of self-rising flour), about 3 cups of broth,  2 half-sized cans of evaporated milk, and about 2 cups of milk to the pot and used a whisk to mix it all up.  Then I added the chicken and drained veggies and let it all simmer for about 15 minutes until the soup got thicker. 

The soup was delicious, and I was able to freeze some broth and extra pieces of cooked chicken for later.  It took less than half an hour and was very cheap because it was all stuff I had in the pantry or freezer.  The pantry is a bit lighter now.  It made enough of soup to feed my family two or three meals. The one-year-old loved it!

She was as excited about making the soup as she was about eating it.

Used a slotted spoon to serve just the solid parts to the one-year-old.