Re: Rep Retirement Lodge #179: Crisp Autumn Weather, Football, and Hockey
I didn't follow one directly. I was going to follow my mom's recipe for it, but she told me that she never follows it, so just wing it.
Basically, this is it: (from memory)
Prep work:
Boil up 1 cup of dry wild rice (makes about 3-4 cups of cooked rice). 1 cup of rice, 4 cups of water, a dash of salt, and boil for an hour, or until the water has evaporated. Set aside the rice.
Pan fry 3 small-medium sized chicken breasts, dice, chop or pull chicken when done. Set aside chicken.
Finely chop up vegetables. I used carrots, onions, green pepper, celery and mushrooms. The ratio between these is up to you, I did less green pepper than the rest. Ended up with probably 2 cups of carrots, 3 cups of celery, 1 cup of green pepper, 1.5 medium sized onions, 3 cups of mushrooms.
Makin' the soup: (can be done while rice and chicken are cooking)
In a large pot (needs to be pretty large), melt 1/2 cup of butter (2 sticks). Then add all vegis, cook them down until they are softened up to your liking. (some like them softer/crunchier than others)
Add 2-3 cups of flour, slowly to the butter and vegi mixture, depending on how thick you want to soup to be, I added 3 cups and my soup turned out hearty and thick. Add flour slowly, while mixing, and should end up in a roux-like paste.
Add in some chicken broth, I don't remember how much I used (I bought the packaged Swanson's broth), I added 1 and a half containers, but I don't recall the size of the containers, they were the middle sized ones. Mix it all well, getting any flour chunks broken up so the soup is smooth and not chunky.
Add the chicken and the wild rice, and salt and pepper to taste.
Heat the soup, and bring it close to boiling, no need to boil it. Once it is close to boiling, add 1 pint of cream (I used half and half), and stir it up well. (don't let it boil once the cream is added, you'll have to turn it down quite a bit. It can separate if you let it boil.)
Let it cook on low heat for a little bit, just to let the flavors meld together. Like many things like this, it is better as leftovers, after the flavors have really come out.
And that's it. Pretty easy, but takes a little while, 2-3 hours, to get completely done. But it is very tasty stuff.