Magical Paleo Crockpot Chicken Soup

There's little as satisfying on a cold winter night than a good, hot, hearty soup. If it's made with chicken, even better. I will say that I've made this before not even thinking about Paleo-anything, and recommend it no matter what your diet.

Ingedients:
1 yellow onion, chopped into 1/2"-1" pieces
One 16-oz package regular whole white mushrooms, washed
4 stalks celery, washed and cut into 1/2"-1" pieces
4 carrots, washed and cut into 1/2"-1" pieces
2 chicken breasts, cubed in about 1" pieces
Penzey's Forward! spice

For liquid, I used 1 1/2 quarts homemade chicken stock (this recipe, but using chicken carcass and scraps instead of beef bones). You can also use water, or canned chicken broth, but this tasted much better!

I chopped all the vegetables, tossed them into tupperware and stuck them in the fridge, because I'm leery of refrigerating my crock overnight and then pulling it out to put in the element while it's cold in the morning. I had the broth already in the fridge from Sunday's crockpotting. In the morning, my only prep was to cut up the chicken breasts, coat them in the Penzey's spice mixture, throw everything into the crockpot, and pour the broth over it all. I turned the crockpot on low at 10am, and ate at about 6pm and everything was cooked through.


The cooked soup isn't as pretty and bright as the raw ingredients, but it is delicious. It did not need any salt, and I find that the full flavor cooking the ingredients in broth delivered is far more satisfying than when I do essentially the same recipe with water instead of broth. (You can do it, it is just less rich.) In terms of servings, I'd estimate 6-8 good sized servings, depending on the size of your bowl and your appetite.

Future changes: I'd love to find a way to thicken the broth a bit to make it more stew-like; I'll have to review some paleo blogs to see how they do that without using flour or cornstarch. Because I prefer my soups more like stews, I would add more vegetables - it's a lot of broth and could use more things to chew on. And it would have been delicious had I been able to sop up the dregs with bread, but drinking the broth kid-style from the bowl was also pretty satisfying. I'd also like to find a way to incorporate sweet potatoes without the potatoes getting mushy.

Scallops, Spinach and Mushrooms, and the Importance of Organized Spices

Tonight's recipe is a lesson in organizing your spices and knowing the properties of your ingredients, so this recipe is a bit of an "oops," though it came out fine in the end. It also encouraged me to add a spice rack to my kitchen wish list.

So, to start and have on hand, in addition to two frying pans, you should have on hand:

Ingredients
- coconut oil
- 6 large sea scallops
- 1 9oz bag of baby spinach
- small package of white button mushrooms
- cumin
- pepper
- cinnamon

I'll also let you know the ingredients I wish I had had on hand:

- white wine, for deglazing the scallop pan

Wash and slice the mushrooms while the coconut oil heats up. Rinse the spinach too - even if you get your produce bagged and pre-washed, you should still give it a rinse. With all the e. coli badness going around nowadays, you can't be too careful.

I put the spinach and mushrooms in my smaller frying pan and covered it to steam. Once my coconut oil was hot, I plopped the scallops down. Having not really worked with coconut oil (and trying valiantly to replace my usual use of extra virgin olive oil), I was surprised that the coconut oil doesn't actually keep things from sticking to stainless the way olive oil does, so I shuffled the scallops around a bit more than I usually would while trying to get them seared. I gave the scallops a barely-there light dusting of cumin (it's strong, you don't need much), and then did the same with the spinach mixture. Intending to give the scallops a wee bit of pepper, I grabbed the container handy on the counter and did that.

But my pepper dusting was a light brown - should I say, cinnamon! - oops. Hrm. Apparently I left the cinnamon out from this morning. Unfortunate. But cinnamon and cumin both go in chili, right? And there was barely much there, thanks to my light spice hand. I could rescue this. I added the intended pepper. Once the bottoms were seared, I did the same dusting - minus the unintended cinnamon - on the other side of the scallops. The scallops stuck a bit (yes, I found myself wishing for olive oil), and I used a bit of broth to deglaze the pan a little (here's where you might use white wine), added that liquid to the spinach. Move both to the plate (the spinach finishes faster than the scallops, so keep an eye on it), and mangia!

The oops-cinnamon and the cumin combine to give the dish a vaguely Moroccan flavor. Given that it's not one of my favorite flavor profiles, I consider this recipe a bit of a mistake, but if you enjoy Moroccan food you may want to try this. As usual, I'm working without salt, so if you need a bit more bang, you may want to add a bit.

When I was finished, I still had a bit of a spinach craving, so I cooked the rest of the 9oz bag with another few sliced mushrooms - just steamed them in the same pan. Ate a whole bag of spinach. And I don't even feel guilty.