Chicken Soup 2 19 2025 Updated to include ingredients and recipe

Chicken Soup Recipe 02 19 2025

Ingredients:

1 large can of chunky chicken soup

4 Large Chicken Drumsticks

4 ounces orzo noodles

3 stalks celery

8 baby carrots

3 slices of bread

½ cup classic seasoned croutons

3 cans water

2 to 4 ounces lemon juice

pinch of wasabi

pinch of Chinese mustard powder

1 T sugar

pinch fenugreek

sprinkle rosemary seeds

pinch ginger

pinch turmeric

Sprinkle Cilantro

Get a large pot. Mine was about 10” in diameter and perhaps 8” high. You are going to cook everything in one pot so there is less to clean.

Partially thaw the four chicken drumsticks in the mwave. Then place them in the bottom of the pot on med to med high heat. As soon as they look like they are heated almost through remove them and fillet the meat off them as best you can. Chop it up to small pieces like you would expect to find in a bowl of chicken soup. Place that back in the pot. Add the lemon juice, sugar and oriental mustard seed. Let that cook for awhile. Now back to the chicken bones. Work on those a little more. Fillet off a little more. Then score them with a knife and break them in two places. Now I took a stainless steel wire. Same wire one might use to make a bucktail fishing lure out of; and I pushed as much of that bone marrow out of those bones into the soup as I could. Before you add that bone marrow add the can of soup and three cans of water. You want that bone marrow to have something to readily disperse into.

Toss the bones in the garbage.

Add the orzo noodles. Chop the carrots and celery and add that.

This is a good way to use drumsticks in cooking. Did you ever notice that the meat by the bone of a drumstick isn't usually fully cooked? This eliminates that. And that drumstick meat has a hearty flavor in it.

Add the remaining spices and let that soup cook good and hot. As always stir to keep the bottom of the pot from burning. When those small noodles look soft and expanded it is near done. The last thing you will add is the croutons and the slices of bread cut to 1/2” cubes.

And this was really good soup. I added some salt to my bowl of it.

I might have missed a spice or two I added. If I remember I will add it to the list. Ingredient amounts are guesstimates in hindsight. Use your own judgment for spices. Croutons always seem to have a basil and garlic flavor so that added to the flavor. Might be thick enough to call it a stew? There was some chicken skins on the drumsticks. I cut those up in the process and they went in too.

First Orzo Noodles I ever bought. They allowed the soup to be stirred better. And the ingredients therefore to impart flavor more readily.

Reminiscent of soul food or slightly reminiscent of sour rabbit.

Hits the spot on a cold freeze day!

I mean so good that you couldn't buy it anywhere! 

© 2025 Thomas Paul Murphy

I wasn't always a good cook.  I can remember my father scraping some stuff I made off the plate straight into the garbage in disgust.  And perhaps that is the best teacher?