Easy Chicken and Rice Soup (Using Costco Rotisserie Chicken)

This is actually a part 2 posting that involves Costco's rotisserie chicken.  In the first part, I used the bones and carcass to make stock that I used for this recipe.  You don't have to make the stock yourself.  You can just used canned.  Trader Joe's has pretty good chicken stock.  But if you wanna give it a shot, you can check out the step by step how to here.  The broth you make from boiling the bones from the Costco rotisserie chicken is really full of flavor and buttery tasting.

The rotisserie chicken they sell at Costco is amaze balls.  It's steroid and hormone free and such a steal for what they charge.  I can get multiple meals out of one chicken.  On of my all time faves is chicken and veggie soup.  You could, of course, just boil fresh chicken, but it doesn't taste as good. There's something about rotisserie chicken and all it's roasted glory....

So here's my very simple recipe for chicken and veggie soup.

You'll need:

Shredded chicken (as much or as little as you want)

chicken stock (can be canned if you want)

onion

bell peppers (any color)

celery

carrots

chicken stock

garlic

dried herbs (I use herbs d' Provence.  You can use thyme and a bay leaf.  whatever)

water

salt

pepper

I start by chopping my celery, onions and bell peppers.

I used about 2 cups of carrots, 7 stalks of celery, an entire onion and half of a yellow pepper and half of a red pepper. Cut your veggies into same sized pieces for even cooking times.

In a large stock pot, I added my veggies and sauteed over medium heat with about a tablespoon of olive oil

To the pot, I added  1/2 tablespoon of kosher salt, a lot of black pepper and about a tablespoon of herbs.

I'm kind of new to the herb game.  My ma never used any, obviously, in Korean cuisine.  Someone (Hi Tere!!) got me this little pot of Provence herbs for Christmas and it's been a use on everything solution.

and about 1/2 tablespoon of chopped garlic.

When your veggies are soft, add 3 cups of stock.  I used homemade stock.  You can use canned.  If you use canned, hold off on adding salt until you taste the canned stock.

Add 3 cups of water to the pot.  I add water because the stock I made is very concentrated.  You can gauge how much water you will need by tasting.  You will want to make sure your veggies are covered with water so use more stock if you need to.  

Now I add my shredded chicken.  This is the meat from one entire Costco rotisserie chicken.  

You can add as much chicken as you want.  I used about half this container.  It's up to you.

Cover your pot and let simmer for about 30-40 minutes on medium low.  Come back to this:

I serve with cooked brown rice.  You can add cooked noodles if you'd like.  I use this kind of rice:

I love this brand because it's brown rice, but not as tough to chew as other brown rice.  It's ALMOST like white rice. Don't add raw rice or noodles.  There won't be enough soup to cook the rice or noodles and you'll end up with a gooey mess...unless that's what you want.

I also like to squeeze a little lemon in my soup because I'm pimp like that.

Serves 4-6.  Although, the Indian ate almost the entire pot in one sitting....