Crockpot Chicken Vegetable Soup

January 2019. New year and new semester at UAB. I am in my second semester and the campus feels less large, the buildings more familiar, the walk from apartment to class automatic. I have started going to the library between classes instead of back to the apartment, which is more efficient and which also puts me in a room with other serious people doing serious work, which is a kind of company I have come to value.

Priya and I have established a kitchen routine: I cook on Monday, Wednesday, Saturday; she cooks or gets takeout on her days; and Diane mostly eats whatever is on the stove when she comes home, which she calls ambient eating and which I find charming. I have been making larger batches of everything, which was the natural adjustment. Four portions instead of two. The jambalaya and the soups and the cornbread all scale without much change.

I am a research assistant now, ten hours a week, in Dr. Ochoa lab. My job is coding observational videos, which means watching footage of children in care and marking specific behaviors according to a protocol. It is painstaking and detail-oriented and I am good at it. Dr. Ochoa said this week: you have the patience for this work. She means it as a professional compliment. I receive it as one. Patience is something I have learned the hard way. It is something I value in cooking too: the long simmer, the roux that cannot be rushed, the dough that knows when you are nervous.

The jambalaya was already in the rotation by January, but soup was the thing I kept coming back to on the days I needed something that would just take care of itself. I would load the slow cooker before my morning classes and come home to something already done—patient in the way the best cooking is, doing its work quietly while I did mine. Making it in a big batch for three people felt right, the way Dr. Ochoa’s comment about patience felt right: not a correction, just a recognition of something already true.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 7 hrs | Total Time: 7 hrs 15 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs
3 medium carrots, peeled and sliced into rounds
3 stalks celery, chopped
1 medium yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium Yukon Gold potatoes, cut into 1-inch cubes
1 cup frozen corn kernels
1 cup frozen green beans, cut into bite-size pieces
1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, undrained
6 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp dried parsley
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 tsp kosher salt, plus more to taste
1 bay leaf

Instructions

Layer the base. Add the diced onion, garlic, carrots, celery, and potatoes to the bottom of a 6-quart slow cooker.
Add the chicken. Lay the chicken thighs over the vegetables in a single layer. Season with salt, pepper, thyme, parsley, and smoked paprika.
Pour in liquids. Add the diced tomatoes with their juices and pour the chicken broth over everything. Drop in the bay leaf.
Cook low and slow. Cover and cook on LOW for 6–7 hours or on HIGH for 3–4 hours, until the chicken is cooked through and the vegetables are tender.
Shred the chicken. Remove the chicken thighs using tongs and shred them on a cutting board with two forks. Return the shredded chicken to the slow cooker.
Add the frozen vegetables. Stir in the frozen corn and green beans. Replace the lid and cook on HIGH for an additional 15–20 minutes until the vegetables are heated through.
Finish and serve. Discard the bay leaf. Taste and adjust salt as needed. Serve hot, with crusty bread or cornbread alongside.

Nutrition (per serving)

Crockpot Chicken Vegetable Soup — The Patience of a Long Simmer