Mastering Cream of Chicken Soup with The Gluten-Free Engineer

In this episode of The Gluten-Free Engineer, we’re making a simple, delicious cream of chicken soup that’s perfect for your gluten-free cooking needs. With just a medium saucepan, a few basic measuring tools, and pantry staples, you can create this flavorful dish in no time! Let’s make gluten-free cooking easy and enjoyable!



Find our show notes and recipes at https://theglutenfreeengineer.com/

Transcript

Carrie Saunders: 0:00

In today's episode, I'm going to walk you through this simple and delicious recipe that is a great addition to your gluten-free cooking, and if you're more of a visual learner, I've got you covered. You can watch the full demonstration on my YouTube channel. Just search for the Gluten-Free Engineer on YouTube and we'll also link to it on the show notes and I show you here exactly how to make it, step-by-step. Plus, the recipe is going to be linked below in the show notes so you can follow along step Plus, the recipe is going to be linked below in the show notes so you can follow along. Note that it's super simple. All you really need is a medium saucepan, a few measuring devices and some simple ingredients that you probably already have in your pantry, and you can whip up the perfect cream of chicken soup that is gluten-free in no time.

Carrie Saunders: 0:40

Welcome to the Gluten-Free Engineer Podcast. I'm your host, k Saunders. In 2011, I was diagnosed with celiac disease, a moment that changed everything, but I was determined not to let it hold me back. With my two engineering degrees, I set out to reverse engineer the gluten-free lifestyle, breaking down recipes, safety tips, travel hacks and everything in between, to rebuild a life I love, whether you have celiac disease, gluten intolerance or simply choose to live gluten-free. This podcast is for you travel hacks and everything in between to rebuild a life I love. Whether you have celiac disease, gluten intolerance or simply choose to live gluten-free, this podcast is for you. Join me each week as we simplify the gluten-free lifestyle, make it fun and prove that you don't have to miss out on anything. Hey there, keri Saunders, the gluten-free engineer, here. So in today's video, we're going to be showing you how to make cream of chicken soup gluten-free from scratch, and I'm going to be talking about some options on how you can make this actually vegan as well, and actually my recipe is vegetarian and it tastes honestly better than if you were to use a chicken cube. So here is the final product and let's get rolling on how we get this thing made.

Carrie Saunders: 1:49

Okay, so let's get started on making our homemade cream of chicken soup. First, we start off with two cups of water, or you can start off with two cups of chicken broth. I personally like to make chicken broth via a bouillon cube, and the bouillon cube that I like to use is the not chicken bouillon cube. So it's actually vegetarian, but I find that it is way tastier than the other bouillon cubes out there. The salt is not out of control on it either and it just tastes so much better.

Carrie Saunders: 2:26

So we're going to start to get that dissolved and boiling and while we wait for that to get going, we're going to put in part of our one and a quarter cup of milk. It doesn't have to be exact, but you do want to warm up some of it while that bouillon cube is dissolving. So while we wait for that to dissolve, we will then start making basically a roux, and you want to use a larger vessel for this generally than what you have your milk in. So we'll put put the milk in there, and then we use some spices here, and these are actually pretty easy set of spices it is. In my case I like to use a teaspoon of salt, a half a teaspoon each of onion, garlic and black pepper powder, and so that's what's in this little bowl already, and we will just put that in with our milk mixture.

Carrie Saunders: 3:29

Go ahead and whisk that up some, and then next we add in two-thirds of a cup of gluten-free one-to-one flour. The type of flour you use in this doesn't matter too much, but it should be a one to one blend, so that has some binding agency to it. So then we just stir that right up. We want to get all the lumps out of it, because nobody likes a lumpy soup, and I usually make a mess just like I swash some of the flour out. So we want to keep whisking this until it is completely incorporated, and while we wait for that to dissolve a little bit more, we can actually take our whisk over here and encourage this boy in cube to dissolve a bit more. We can actually take our whisk over here and encourage this bouillon cube to dissolve a bit more.

Carrie Saunders: 4:27

So while we wait for the water, chicken bouillon and a little bit of milk to come to boil, I want to explain a little bit of the reason of why I created this cream of chicken soup from scratch. You know why not go buy your own gluten-free cream of chicken soup? Because you can find them at the store sometimes. Well, one year I couldn't find them at the store. They were all sold out and I ordered them from Amazon and they didn't come in time. What actually came instead was somebody else's order, and this is an integral part of one of my recipes. It's my favorite kids recipes at the holidays are chicken curry casserole, and they needed cream of chicken soup that was gluten-free because we're celiac. So I looked it up on the internet, found a recipe, adjusted it to fit my casserole recipe, which is the ingredient ratio I'm giving to you today, and I'll put it in the description of the video too.

Carrie Saunders: 5:19

So I had to learn how to make this by myself, and what I found was that this version of cream of chicken soup tastes so much better than store-bought, so I have been since then making it on my own, homemaking it every single time. It only takes about 10 minutes or less. I can be doing the rest of my casserole preparation while I'm waiting for the cream of chicken soup to cook and get ready too. So it doesn't even take any more time than I'm already making for the casserole preparation while I'm waiting for the cream of chicken soup to cook and get ready too. So it doesn't even take any more time than I'm already making for the casserole, and it's so much tastier.

Carrie Saunders: 5:50

You can make it gluten-free. You can make it dairy-free if you want. You can use a substitute milk like coconut milk for it. You can adjust it to however you want, so you can actually make this vegan. Right now I've got it vegetarian, where I'm using the veggie bouillon cubes, but if you use coconut milk, then you can make it vegan if that's your preference and your need, all right. So now that our water and milk mixture is about to boil and the chicken cube, which does not actually have any chicken in it at all, it just has some wonderful spaces to it.

Carrie Saunders: 6:27

Now that it is dissolved, we can slowly incorporate our milk, flour and seasoning mixture into the pot, and I'm just stirring it one more time to make sure there isn't any lumps. I really like to make sure there isn't any lumps, because it makes this next step a lot easier. So we want to be stirring this as we're slowly pouring it in. You can see I don't have a whole lot of lumps in mine, so that's really important to not have lumps, if you can. And then I like to get all the bits out, because this is where all the yummy spaces are. And then we want to be just simmering this on a low simmer. I'm going to store it a little bit slowly first, until everything starts mixing together better and this actually comes together and gets thick pretty quickly. I have found, especially on a gas stove, it might take a little longer on an electric stove, but you can heat and cook this to your desired thickness. I would want mine a little bit thicker than it currently is. It's almost there, okay.

Carrie Saunders: 7:54

So the final and most important step to making gluten-free cream and chicken soup is giving it a taste. Just dip a spoon in there and hopefully you can see all the good. Let me actually make sure this focuses on it. Look how yummy that is. Okay. So it's super duper yummy. So you just want to taste it. Make sure it tastes to your liking. Tastes really good, doesn't need more salt, doesn't need more pepper. I think it's just perfect. I hope you loved the special recipe episode of the Gluten-Free Engineer podcast. If you have any feedback about having these recipe episodes in my podcast, I would love to hear from you, just dropping me an email at hello at theglutenfreeengineercom. Again, that's hello at theglutenfreeengineercom. And, as always, you can find our show notes, recipes and more resources on theglutenfreeengineercom. And, as always, you can find our show notes, recipes and more resources on the glutenfreeengineercom. And we will see you next week.