Slow Cooker Chicken and Wild Rice Soup

The rain came this week. Not the usual afternoon thunderstorms that hit Baton Rouge every summer — the kind where the sky opens up for twenty minutes, everything floods, and then the sun comes back like nothing happened. This was different. This was the sky breaking open and not stopping. It rained for three days straight, starting Saturday, and by Monday morning the streets in my neighborhood were underwater.

I need to say something about what happened this week, because it's important and because I'm still processing it. The Great Flood of 2016. That's what they're already calling it. A no-name storm — not a hurricane, not even a tropical depression, just rain — dumped 31 inches of water on the Baton Rouge area in three days. Thirty-one inches. The rivers and bayous couldn't hold it. The drainage couldn't move it. And the water went where water goes: into people's houses.

Our house was spared. Claycut Drive sits on a slight rise — maybe eighteen inches higher than the surrounding streets — and that eighteen inches saved us. Two houses down, on the corner, the water was in the living room. Across the street, up to the kitchen counters. I stood on my porch on Monday morning and looked at a neighborhood that was half underwater, and the only thing between me and that water was eighteen inches of elevation and the kind of luck that makes you feel guilty for having it.

I did what Joey would have done: I got to work. Waded out to the neighbors — Larry and Deb on the corner, the Nguyens across the street, old Mr. Claude who's eighty and was standing in two feet of water in his living room trying to save a photo album. I helped move furniture to second floors, carried boxes to dry ground, sandbagged where we could. When the water receded on Wednesday, I started gutting houses. That's the word — gutting. You pull the sheetrock, the insulation, the baseboards, everything that touched the floodwater, because floodwater isn't just water. It's sewage, chemicals, everything the drainage system was carrying. It's poison dressed as a puddle.

I know this. I know it in my body, in my hands, in the place behind my ribs where the memory of Katrina lives. Eleven years ago I stood in water like this in Chalmette, watching everything I owned float away. I stood in Marie-Claire's kitchen soaking wet and said, "We'll start over." And now I'm watching my neighbors do what I did, and the helplessness of it — the rage and the helplessness — is a taste in the back of my throat that I thought I'd forgotten.

I didn't sleep Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. The insomnia that lives in me — the Katrina insomnia, the listening-for-water insomnia — came back like it had never left. I lay in bed and listened to the rain and my heart raced and my hands shook and Danielle held my hand in the dark and said, "We're okay, Tommy. We're dry." And we were. But I wasn't.

I didn't cook this week. Not really. Danielle made sandwiches. Neighbors brought food — someone dropped off a pot of chicken soup, someone else brought a pan of cornbread. That's what we do. We feed each other when the water comes. We don't ask what you need. We bring a pot and we leave it on your porch and we go help the next house. This is Louisiana. This is what we've always done. This is the only thing that works.

I didn’t make this soup — not this week — but the neighbor who left a pot on our porch did, and when I finally ate something real on Thursday afternoon, sitting at the kitchen table while the rain had finally stopped, it was the first thing that felt like being okay again. There’s something about a long-cooked soup that a sandwich can’t do: it asks nothing of you, it just holds you. When I was ready to cook again, this is what I made — slow, forgiving, the kind of thing you put together and then let be.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 7 hours | Total Time: 7 hours 15 min | Servings: 8

Ingredients

2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs
1 cup uncooked wild rice blend, rinsed
3 medium carrots, peeled and sliced into coins
3 stalks celery, sliced
1 medium yellow onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
6 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 cup water
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp dried rosemary
1/2 tsp dried sage
1 tsp kosher salt, plus more to taste
1/2 tsp black pepper
2 bay leaves
1 cup half-and-half or whole milk
3 tbsp all-purpose flour
2 tbsp unsalted butter
Fresh parsley, chopped, for serving

Instructions

Load the slow cooker. Place the chicken thighs in the bottom of a 6-quart slow cooker. Add the rinsed wild rice, carrots, celery, onion, and garlic on top.
Add the broth and seasonings. Pour in the chicken broth and water. Add thyme, rosemary, sage, salt, pepper, and bay leaves. Stir gently to distribute.
Cook low and slow. Cover and cook on LOW for 6–7 hours or HIGH for 3–4 hours, until the chicken is tender and the rice has bloomed and softened.
Shred the chicken. Remove the chicken thighs with tongs and shred them on a cutting board using two forks. Return the shredded chicken to the pot and discard the bay leaves.
Make the cream base. In a small saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter. Whisk in the flour and cook 1 minute. Slowly whisk in the half-and-half until smooth and slightly thickened, about 2–3 minutes.
Finish the soup. Stir the cream mixture into the slow cooker. Let the soup cook on LOW an additional 15–20 minutes until thickened slightly. Taste and adjust salt and pepper.
Serve or transport. Ladle into bowls and top with fresh parsley. To bring to a neighbor, transfer the finished soup to a heavy pot with a tight lid. It holds heat for 45 minutes and reheats beautifully on the stovetop over low heat.

Nutrition (per serving)

Slow Cooker Chicken and Wild Rice Soup — The Pot You Leave on the Porch