This is the best made-from-scratch chicken vegetable soup recipe you’ll ever taste. It’s a favorite of my family and I’m betting it will quickly become a favorite of your family’s, too.
As part of my ongoing quest to test and taste every recipe in the Fannie Farmer Cookbook 100th Edition, I’ve made the Vegetable Soup recipe on page 88 of the 13th edition of the book. I have made considerable changes to the original chicken vegetable soup recipe, so many that I am putting my entire recipe here.
Differences Between the Original and My Recipe
The most notable difference between the original chicken vegetable soup recipe and my own version is the absence of salt.
As some longtime readers of Home Garden Joy may recall, my husband and I am on a low sodium diet. Soup, especially store bought canned soup, is extremely high in sodium. I used to think nothing of opening a can or two of soup for dinner and serving it with crackers and calling it a night. Not anymore. The 1,000 – 2,000 mg of sodium per each soup meal is enough to derail a low sodium diet.
Cooking soup from scratch is easier than it sounds, especially now that companies like Swanson’s have released packaged unsalted or no-sodium added broths. These broths are available in the soup aisle, near the canned chicken and beef broth. They are packed in cartons and although they have some sodium – between 65 – 100 mg per serving – it’s nowhere near the high amount in traditional broths.
Make This Chicken Vegetable Soup Recipe
To make the soup very flavorful, you’ll need to cook what the French call a mirepoix.
Mirepoix means dicing the vegetables into very small cubes and sautéing them slowly in a little butter or margarine.
Makes 4 servings, approximately 1 cup each
Ingredients
- 3 stalks of celery, ends cut off and discarded, diced into small cubes
- 2 large carrots, peeled and diced into small cubes
- 1 onion, diced
- 1 large potato, diced
- 4 ounces Ditalini (small Italian pasta, or omit if you’d prefer no pasta)
- 1 carton Swanson no-sodium added chicken broth
- Mrs. Dash for flavoring
- 2 – 4 tablespoons butter or margarine
Prepare the vegetables for the mirepoix. Wash, peel, and dice the celery, carrots and onion. In a large soup pot with a fitted lid, melt margarine or butter and add the diced celery, carrots, and onion. Cook gently, over low heat, stirring frequently, for 10 minutes.
After 10 minutes, add the diced potato, and cook for another 5 minutes.
Add the entire carton of chicken broth to the pot. Bring to a boil, then lower to simmer. Cover and simmer 20-30 minutes.
While the soup is simmering, cook the Ditalini pasta separately. Add to the soup just before serving. Add Mrs. Dash or salt, if you don’t mind the sodium, to flavor the soup. Test the vegetables before serving – the carrots and potatoes should be soft, but not mushy.
Serve with Water Bread and Rolls and top it off with Apple Cobbler for dessert.
This recipe is part of a series called Cooking with Fannie Farmer and Me. I share tips, reviews, and my own spin on classic Fannie Farmer 13th Edition Recipes. You can find the 13th edition of the Fannie Farmer Cookbook in bookstores, at your public library, or order here.
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Revere 6-square stockpot (my personal favorite)
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Jeanne Grunert is a certified Virginia Master Gardener and the author of several gardening books. Her garden articles, photographs, and interviews have been featured in The Herb Companion, Virginia Gardener, and Cultivate, the magazine of the National Farm Bureau. She is the founder of The Christian Herbalists group and a popular local lecturer on culinary herbs and herbs for health, raised bed gardening, and horticulture therapy.
