Imagine your favorite chicken pot pie: creamy, rich, and chock full of cubed chicken breast, tender potatoes, carrots and green peas. Now imagine it out of the ramekin and in a soup bowl, slightly thinner but no less creamy, in soup form. Sounds good right?
Trust me, it tastes even better.
Of course, the best part of chicken pot pie is the crust (obviously), which is why I topped this soup with buttery salt and pepper pie crust crackers. They turned out so good I’m giving them their own post… stay tuned later this week for the recipe (plus other flavor variations for sweet AND savory applications!)
(Also, excuse me for a second while I toot my own horn but that bowl up there? I MADE IT. Like, with my hands and a lump of clay. Ok, so out of 30 some odd pieces I made during the 9-week ceramics class I took last term, it was one of the 3 or so that are actually usable, but I’m so dang proud of it and the fact that it was actually usable in a photo I couldn’t not say anything.)
Anyway, more about this soup…
How do you keep creamy soups from separating? Pretend like you’re making ice cream. Make sure your dairy is at room temperature and your soup base is hot but not quite simmering. And then? Temper your dairy: whisk a bit of the hot soup liquid into the dairy, a spoonful at a time, until it is warm to the touch, then whisk it into the pot with the rest of the soup. This also brings the soup down to a perfect consumption temperature almost instantly, so you don’t even need to reheat it (or if you do, just be sure you don’t let it boil or the dairy fat might separate).
While there will still be a little bit of fat that will rise to the surface (that’s unavoidable), it’s a heck of a lot more homogenized than if you added cold dairy directly to hot soup. Trust me on this one and don’t skip this step.
The flavor of this soup comes mainly from the stock. Notice I said stock, not broth. If you have homemade chicken stock, you’re golden, otherwise, pick up a good quality chicken stock like Kitchen Basics brand or Trader Joe’s new chicken stock (which is what we used here, and I was pleasantly surprised with how good it was.).
The soup itself has so much flavor and a lovely thick mouthfeel that you could also leave out the cream if you wanted just a damn good chicken soup without the extra fat. Of course, the cream is what makes it chicken pot pie soup, but it’d still be a lovely soup without it (I just might recommend using 5 cups of chicken stock instead to make up the volume).
This thick and creamy chicken pot pie soup recipe is loaded with chunks of chicken breast, potatoes, carrots and peas and topped with crispy pie crust crackers – it’s the soup version of your favorite chicken pot pie!
Let us know what you think!
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