Dutch Oven Chicken Soup Recipes

Steps:

• Rinse and clean whole chicken, taking out the giblets. You can cook these with the chicken for flavour if you like.
• Place your chicken into your Dutch oven or a large stock pot. I have "Vintage" Reverware and love it! But you use what you have. A 6 quart size is good.
• Fill the pot with water to cover the chicken, about 1/4 inch more over the chicken if you have room.
• Turn you burner on high with your stockpot centered and bring the water to a boil. Then turn the heat down to a slow boil and add the onion, pepper and powdered garlic. This will flavor you chicken.
• Cook the chicken through, until a fork pierces the main part easily, do not cook it off the bone or you'll have chicken mush, not soup.
• I set a very large Pyrex bowl in my sink, get out my largest stainless steel colander and place it in the bowl, and pour the whole pot of broth and chicken into the colander. Be careful about the steam so it doesn't scald you!
• Set the pot back on the stove (You did turn it off for now, right?).
• Lift the colander out of the bowl, straining the juice through it. Set it on a large plate or cutting board.
• Carefully pour the broth from the bowl to the stock pot. Turn the heat back on and simmer the broth. Add more water if necessary to bring the level up to about an inch from the rim of you pot. Use less liquid if you want less soup.
• Add potatoes, celery, carrots, rice and bouillon cubes to your broth at this point. Cover and simmer at a slow boil to continue to cook.
• On your cutting board: use a fork and knife to pull pieces from the cooked chick, leaving the skin, fat and bones to discard. I don't keep the onion from this either, it's just to flavor the soup. If you like, you can break the leg and thigh bones and add them to the broth so their marrow can continue to flavour the soup. Discard these bones before serving.
• Cut the chicken meat to sizes you like.
• Check your vegetables, if they are almost cooked, add your chicken back into the stockpot. Taste your broth and add seasonings and salt to taste. I have people who are sensitive to salt, so I don't cook with it often, but it's on my table.
• Finish simmering until vegetables are done. Turn off the heat.
• If you are making biscuits, leave the cover on and bake your biscuits now, while the soup "sets". If your family is like mine, this gives you a good excuse for a "breather" while your biscuits bake, and it sound so "secret recipe-ish".

Steps:

• Build a fire in a fire pit or on a metal Dutch oven camp table with wood or charcoal briquettes. Allow fire to burn down to hot coals. This will take about an hour. Using charcoal and a charcoal starter is even faster - like about 30 minutes. A charcoal starter is a metal tube with a handle that makes lighting charcoal easier. You can find them on the internet or at a camping gear store. We REALLY need to invest in one!
• While you are waiting for the fire to burn down to hot coals, scrub and cube the potatoes into about 1x1" cubes and peel and dice the onion.
• Spray a 12 quart cast iron Dutch oven with cooking spray. Dump all three cans of cream of chicken soup in the Dutch oven and add three cans of water. Stir soup and water until well mixed.
• Add potatoes, onions, baby carrots and chicken to Dutch oven and mix with soup. Make sure the chicken and vegetables are covered (or mostly covered) with soup or they will dry out. If you need to, add another can of soup and another can of water. (Today I only used two cans of each and the soup soaked into the chicken and veggies and it was a tad dry.).
• Flatten out the coals. Put the lid on Dutch oven and put the Dutch oven on top of coals. Put coals on top of lid so the top will cook too. This is most easily performed with a small shovel with a long handle. Especially if the fire pit is deep. It's also nice to have oven mitts on your hands 'cuz that fire gets hot!
• Cook chicken and vegetables 40 minutes to an hour, until chicken is cooked through and potatoes and carrots are fork tender. (Note to Self: Don't take the coals off the lid if you have a Dutch oven with an outside rim like we do. Those coals aren't going to drop into the food and you'll have to scoop them on top of the Dutch oven again.).
• Open the two cans of biscuits and put them on top of the hot chicken mixture in one layer. Put biscuits close together so they'll all fit.
• Return lid to Dutch oven and put on coals. Put coals back on the lid if you had to remove them earlier when you checked the chicken mixture. Bake for 8-10 minutes, until biscuits are golden brown.
• Enjoy the fruits of your labor. Speaking of fruit, this dish goes well with fresh fruit and/or salad. We had watermelon and grapes today. Once you're done eating, the coals will be perfect or s'mores, banana boats or other tasty campfire treats.