Chicken bacon and wild rice soup ... with a little Thermomix help

Last night I got home from a work week dead tired and I still had dinner to cook, fortunately for me, The Boy wanted nachos for dinner and that was easy to do. On top of that I had to decide what to cook for the weekend since we were going to be home during the weekend and needing meals both nights.

I went through my Pinterest board where I had pinned a whole bunch of stuff and came across a soup recipe that sounded good. Now, it's not exactly the season for soup here since it's supposed to be Summer though the weather has not been terribly warm. (Right now though the apartment is very warm from all the cooking I've been doing!)

Anyway, I asked The Boy what he thought of chicken bacon and wild rice soup and he thought is sounded very good and immediately suggested a lovely chardonnay that would go well with it.

Therefore, tonight, we are having soup for dinner and here's the RECIPE for it:

Ingredients:

• 8 cups chicken stock
• ½ cup uncooked wild rice, rinsed
• ½ cup finely chopped green onions
• ½ cup margarine or butter
• ¾ cup all-purpose flour
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon poultry seasoning
• ⅛ teaspoon pepper
• 2 cups milk
• 1½ cup cubed or shredded cooked chicken or turkey (2 chicken thigh fillets)
• 8 slices bacon, crisply cooked and crumbled
• 1 tablespoon chopped red capsicum
• 2-3 tablespoons dry sherry or white wine, if desired

Instructions:

• In a large saucepan, put in chicken stock. Add wild rice and onions. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer 30-45 minutes (or until rice is tender). Once the rice is cooked, there will be some additional broth – do not drain.
• In a medium saucepan, melt margarine, stir in flour, salt, seasoning, and pepper. Cook 1 minute, stirring constantly, until smooth and bubbly. Gradually stir in milk with the butter/flour mixture and cook until slightly thickened, stirring constantly.
• Add this creamy mixture back into the saucepan with the rice/broth. Add remaining ingredients (chicken, bacon, capsicum, and sherry). Heat on low, stirring every once in a while, for at least a half an hour. Do not boil. The mixture will look thin, but the longer you heat the soup, the more the flavors merry and the more it will thicken. This soup is best served after gently heating for an extended period of time (even a few hours) or the next day! For extra flavor, add more poultry seasoning and/or bacon.

I was immediately daunted by the bit in the recipe that needed to make a roux and I was quite daunted by it - I'm a complete wuss when it comes to making a roux and I get very intimidated by it so thank goodness for the Thermomix. I went through my Thermomix recipes and decided to look for one that would do the roux and found one which was went something like this:

Thermomix version of creamy mixture:

• Add margarine, flour, salt, seasoning, pepper, milk into Thermomix. Cook at 90 degrees for 12 minutes on speed 4.

Unfortunately for me, this turned out to be rather a thick roux by following the cooking instructions exactly and I was left with lumpy dough that I somehow had to smooth out into a creamy texture. To the rescue came my trusty hand blender and the whisk attachment. My mistake was putting the hand blender in without covering the pot because EVERYTHING went EVERYWHERE. What a splash it made! I'm sure that I will be cleaning up soup mixture for a long time! but the whisk did the trick and turned my soup back into a lovely, thick, creamy texture.

Now, I just need to adjust the Thermomix recipe for the creamy mixture for the next time I make this soup. I think the trick is to not let it go the whole 12 minutes but to check it for texture about 3 minutes in. (Just a little tip for those of you who have a Thermomix)

I followed the recipe pretty much exactly for the quantities and that made a lot of soup. I went with 8 cups of chicken stock when in fact, I should have gone with 6 cups of chicken stock because there's only the 2 of us eating and there's now enough soup for about 3 or 4 meals for the 2 of us. I am going to have to freeze some of the soup for future consumption, I'm thinking.

Where it said bring to boil and simmer for 30 - 45 minutes for cooking the rice, instead of simmering the soup on the stove, I cooked the soup in a cast iron pot and put the whole thing into the oven for the time recommended at 120dC to cook the rice, which worked out well as a no mess, no fuss way of simmering something. The only thing with doing it this way was there was a lot less evaporation and that also contributed to me having a lot more liquid left in the pot and hence, a lot of soup.

The soup was still a very thick, very creamy texture.

I wanted a slightly smokier flavor and something to enhance the bacon further, so I also added some smoked paprika to the soup to give it more depth and a little additional flavor on top of the chicken and bacon flavor which was the dominant flavors.

I also listened to the recipe and cooked the soup early, so it sat in the oven with the lid on, cooking at a low 90dC for several hours to get the most out of the flavor.

Other than that, the soup turned out to be very, very tasty, though with the bacon and all that chicken stock, I don't think the extra chicken seasoning and the salt was really necessary and next time I will leave it out - this means that next time I will go with 6 cups of chicken stock and no extra chicken seasoning and no salt.

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Mushroom and wild rice soup

Last weekend, we went out walking - The Boy and I, and we decided ... okay, well, I decided that I wanted to stop at the fresh food markets. We went through and bought a whole heap of fresh fruit and vegetables. Among the stuff we bought were some amazing fresh mushrooms. The guy at the mushroom stall said that the mushrooms would keep up to 2 weeks refrigerated but we decided to use most of it the first night and made a lovely mushroom risotto. There was still plenty of mushrooms left, and The Boy said he wanted a mushroom and wild rice soup.

This weekend, we headed up to The House and brought the mushrooms with us and tonight I'm making mushroom and wild rice soup. The recipe which I found here, called for 1/2 a pound of mushrooms, so I bought another small package of fresh Swiss Brown mushrooms to add to the mix that I already had.

Here's the RECIPE I used for the soup, which I found on the interwebs. (However did we manage before Google?):

Ingredients: Makes about 6 servings

• 1 cup wild rice
• 1 large onion, diced
• 4 celery stalks, diced
• 1 pound mushrooms, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 cup white wine
• 1 bay leaf
• 1-2 cheese rinds (optional)
• 4 cups vegetable or chicken stock
• 2 teaspoons rosemary
• 1 cup whole milk or cream
• 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
• 2 teaspoons salt, divided

Instructions:

• Bring a pot of water to a boil. Add the wild rice and one teaspoon of salt, and reduce to a simmer. Cook for 40-50 minutes, until the rice has burst open and tastes tender. Drain, reserving the cooking liquid to use as stock if desired.
• While the rice cooks, prepare the rest of the soup. Warm a teaspoon of oil in a dutch oven or stock pot over medium-high heat. Add the onions and celery with a half teaspoon of salt, and cook until the onions have softened and turned translucent, 3-5 minutes. Turn the heat down to medium and stir in the mushrooms and another half teaspoon of salt. Cook until the mushrooms have released all their liquid and turned dark brown, 15-20 minutes. Don't skimp on this step! This is where the soup gets its deep, rich flavor.
• Add the garlic and oregano, and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Sprinkle the flour over the veggies and stir until the vegetables become sticky and there is no more visible dry flour. Increase the heat again to medium-high and pour in the wine. Stir and scrape the brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Continue simmering until the wine has reduced and thickened a bit.
• Add the bay leaf, cheese rinds, and stock. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Simmer for 20 minutes to meld the flavors. Add the rosemary, milk, and wild rice. Simmer for another 10-15 minutes, until the soup has thickened to your liking. Stir in the cider vinegar. Taste and add more salt or vinegar to taste.
• Leftovers will keep refrigerated for up to a week.

I didn't have cider vinegar, so I used white wine vinegar instead, but other than that, I pretty much followed the recipe exactly ... except for the fact that I used maybe 5 cloves of garlic rather than the 2 it asked for.

I also used the water that boiled the rice for the soup rather than throwing it out.

Oh! and I didn't have any cheese rind, so I left that out and I also used chicken stock rather than vegetable stock since I didn't have any of that, so that is what I used instead.

... So maybe I should take back the bit where I say I pretty much followed the recipe exactly ... because ... um, I didn't. :-)

The soup turned out to be very rich and creamy. Simply delicious.

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