Homemade Cream of Chicken Soup

Late March. Six years since my first blog post. Six years since I sat at the kitchen table at two AM, nursing a newborn, writing about miso soup because I had nothing else and needed something. Six years and the something has become everything: a book, an audience, a career, an identity. Writer. The word I resisted for years is now the word I use first, before yoga teacher, before mother, before anything else. Writer. Fumiko's granddaughter. The woman who learned to read her grandmother's handwriting.

I made onigiri — not for any occasion, just because onigiri is what I make when I need to feel my own hands working, when I need the physical practice of shaping rice into something that holds, something that travels, something that feeds. The onigiri is the ur-recipe, the original, the food that started this whole journey. Before miso soup, before dashi, before the tamagoyaki pan and the chipped bowl — there was onigiri. Rice. Salt. Hands. Shape. That is all. That is everything.

I submitted the final manuscript of the book — the truly final version, every comma checked, every recipe tested, every memory verified against the recipe cards and the photographs and the aching, unreliable, absolutely essential evidence of my own grief-sharpened recall. The book is done. The book is in the world. The book will appear on shelves in September. The sentence is still too large. I am still too small for it. But the book does not care about my size. The book is its own thing now, separate from me, the way Miya is separate from me — made from me, but not me, living its own life, going into rooms I cannot enter.

I made miso soup at six AM and drank it from the chipped bowl and the taste was the taste it always is and the sameness was the miracle. Six years of change — the marriage, the divorce, the pandemic, the apartment, the book — and the soup is the same. The soup has not changed. I have changed around the soup, like a river changing course around a stone. The stone is the soup. The stone is Fumiko. The stone is the practice. Everything else — everything — has moved. The stone has stayed.

The book is done, and I am standing in a kitchen that feels simultaneously too large and exactly the right size. I wanted to cook — not to document, not to photograph, just to make something with my hands that would feed someone. The onigiri was already made. The miso was already drunk. So I turned to a different kind of soup, the one that lives in American pantry memory the way dashi lives in mine: a proper, honest, from-scratch cream of chicken soup, no can required. Fumiko would have understood the impulse, I think — not the recipe, but the need behind it. Some days, you make the thing that grounds you. Whatever the thing is, you make it.

Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 20 min | Total Time: 30 min | Servings: Equivalent to 1 can condensed (about 2 cups)

Ingredients

3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 cup low-sodium chicken broth
1/2 cup whole milk
1/2 cup cooked chicken, very finely minced
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
1/8 teaspoon white pepper
Pinch of dried thyme

Instructions

Build the roux. Melt the butter in a small, heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Once foaming subsides, whisk in the flour all at once. Cook, whisking constantly, for 1—2 minutes until the mixture smells faintly nutty and turns a pale gold.
Add the liquids slowly. Reduce heat to medium-low. Pour in the chicken broth a few tablespoons at a time, whisking after each addition until fully incorporated and smooth before adding more. Once the broth is worked in, add the milk the same way. This patience prevents lumps.
Season. Stir in the salt, onion powder, garlic powder, white pepper, and thyme. Taste and adjust — the mixture should be well-seasoned since it will be diluted or used in a larger dish.
Simmer to thicken. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring frequently with a silicone spatula, for 8—10 minutes until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon and holds a line when you drag your finger across it. It should look like a very thick cream sauce.
Add the chicken. Stir in the finely minced cooked chicken and cook for another 2 minutes to warm through and let the flavors meld. The chicken pieces should be small enough to nearly dissolve into the base.
Use or store. Use immediately as a 1:1 substitute for one can of condensed cream of chicken soup in any recipe. To use as a soup, stir in an additional 1 cup of broth or milk and heat through. Store refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 5 days, or freeze in 1-cup portions for up to 3 months.

Nutrition (per serving, approx. 1/4 cup condensed)

Homemade Cream of Chicken Soup — Because Some Days, You Just Need to Make Something from Scratch