Food as Medicine: Grandma’s Chicken Soup (3 Healing Meals from One Chicken)

Introduction: Food as Medicine 0:00

What is the first thing that you want when you start feeling sick? Is it grandma's chicken soup? Why? Does it really work? Food is medicine. Let's dig into this. Do you want to live well? Meaning, do you want to stay well? Not wait to make changes until you're already sick? Well, welcome to my home. Let's go on this journey together. Your grandma made you chicken soup when you weren't feeling well for a lot of reasons. The essential components that go in that soup, chicken, onions, carrots, potatoes, broth, all of those things actually have real medicinal value.

They actually help heal your cells. Now I'm going to teach you why, but first I want to give you a little tip and trick that you're going to be able to use not only when you're sick, but every single week in your home. I'm going to show you how to turn this chicken into three meals. Simple meals that you can do every single week if your family loves them like my family does. Because chicken soup, you can't have it without the chicken. So let's actually start with this chicken recipe. What I'm gonna be doing is putting a spice rub on this, but I'm gonna let you off the hook here.

You don't actually have to rub it. So many people tell me, I don't even know what to do with the raw chicken. I don't wanna touch it, all of these things. Well, I'm gonna show you the easiest way to manage this. First of all, we need to combine our spices. And for the entire complete recipe, check the notes. We're gonna be adding them in, but I'm gonna explain what I'm adding. Salt. Actually, that might feel like a lot of salt, but it is what makes this taste so delicious. Just a tiny bit of cayenne pepper, and believe me, that kick is actually really wonderful.

Thyme, some onion powder, garlic powder, paprika and pepper. Now all of these things are gonna combine together. And interestingly, these things all have medicine too. Garlic and onions are very good for fighting viruses and bacteria, the things that create those colds that we're all trying to avoid.

Seasoning and Preparing the Chicken 1:58

Pepper warms up your system. Salt conducts those minerals to the cells. So this is medicine right here in a bowl, but it's also incredibly delicious. In fact, it's interesting, this chicken recipe, is the recipe that my kids request on birthdays, on Father's Day. They all say, please make your chicken. So you're gonna want this recipe even if you're not making soup. Let's talk about it. This is a little daunting for people sometimes, the raw chicken. So this is a whole chicken. There's one little trick you need to know.

It has stuff on the inside that you want to get out. So I'm going to get this out for you. It's just the guts. That's what we're going to call it. It's the guts. You're going to pull them out. You're going to put them in a bowl. You can do something with them if you want, but most of us, we just get rid of them. So the guts are coming out. Now, after the guts come out, what I'm going to do is go wash my hands. Anytime I'm working with the chicken, I'm going to be washing my hands a lot. And I have this cutting board.

This is a plastic cutting board I only use with meat. It fits perfectly on top of my cutting board. but it's going to go straight in washing with hot water and soap, and I'm not really cooking anything else on it. So I'm going to go wash my hands and I'll be back and show you how to put this rub on. Let's talk about the chicken for just a minute here. What kind is it? Pulled chicken, but is it a stewing chicken, a fryer chicken? Stewing chicken is going to be a little tougher, frying chicken a little more moist, but this recipe Everything is moist, so honestly, you can use either one.

Now we're gonna cook this in a crock pot, which means you're gonna put it in the morning, you're gonna set it, and forget it. You don't have to do anything with this all day long, and you're gonna be surprised by the recipe. It's so simple. So what we're going to do is we're gonna actually put it into the crock pot first. The reason is, I want to save every bit of that spice mix that I have. I'm gonna start sprinkling the spice mix on top of the back of the chicken first. sprinkling about half of it on, it's just coating over that chicken.

Now, unfortunately, this is one you're probably gonna have to do with your hands, you're gonna flip it over. I want a lot of spice on the breast side, so we're gonna sprinkle the rest of this all over the breast side. Remember, the extra's just going in the bottom of that crock pot, so it doesn't matter that it's falling. We're sprinkling it as much as we can. That's it. This takes me five minutes in the morning. I'm gonna cut the lid on this. If I have all day, I'll set it to low. If I have four to five hours, I'll set it to high.

and it goes no water, no nothing, just this. Okay, while the chicken is cooking, I also want to have the rest of my meal cooking if possible. So I am gonna start working on these potatoes and carrots, gonna show you what we're doing there, but I've gotta go wash my hands again and get rid of my chicken stuff. Okay, busy mom tip. Oftentimes, the worst time to cook is 5 p.m., right? Kids are coming home from school, you're coming home from work, everybody's asking what's for dinner. So what do we do?

We actually prep things outside of that 5 o'clock p.m. window. I often prep the night before or early in the morning, other times. That's what we're going to do here as well. We have the chicken cooking in the crock pot. It's going to just sit there and do its business all day. I want to have a meal with chicken and potatoes and gravy and carrots. That's my meal for tonight. So I'm actually going to prep these. I'm going to be peeling all of these. I'm going to cover them with water. That's the key, especially with potatoes.

cover them with water, add a little bit of salt, and they can actually sit there just like that on your stove until 5 p.m. You get home, you flip the burner on, within 20 minutes your potatoes are done without the work of the peeling and all of that.

Slow-Cooking the Chicken and Prepping Vegetables 5:29

So I'm going to go peel, but before then I'm going to show you when I have carrots, I'm actually going to keep these tops. You're gonna see why in a little bit. What am I gonna do with the carrot tops? In addition to, you know, chucking them in the compost bin. Nope, we're keeping these. So I'm gonna go peel and then we're gonna go see what's next. Okay, so I have these almost all peeled and cut. What I want to point out is with the carrots, I'm actually going to leave them a little bit bigger and you're going to find out why in just a minute.

So important to have a decent knife, a good cutting board. Carrots are going in here, like I said, with a little bit of water. Potatoes, we're going to leave these in a little bit bigger segments also so that we can use them in a different way. As long as they're cooking long enough, it doesn't matter. So that's all going to go in the pans. Those, like I said, are going to go sit on the stove covered in water with a little bit of salt until it's time to start cooking. Then they are ready to go. Let's go see what comes next.

Okay, it's time for dinner. The good news is chicken is done. Look at that steam coming off of there. It is so tender and moist, and you're going to be shocked to see how much liquid is in here, even though we didn't add any water. Potatoes, carrots, all done, ready to serve. I actually only took half of them. You're going to see why in a bit. So half the potatoes and carrots, chicken. Let's figure out what we're going to do with this. Now, sometimes it's so tender, it just falls apart on the way out.

We're going to see what this one does. Yep, it's falling apart. That's OK. I'm still going to show you what we're doing with it. So everything's coming out here and we're going to break this apart. into the usable pieces. I'm only going to use half of the chicken right now. So some of this, we absolutely are saving everything. That's why I'm using this cookie sheet is because we're saving every single thing. Anything edible, we're gonna just put on this plate right over here. Everything that's not is gonna go in the corner over there.

So some of this is kind of the parts that you usually are avoiding in a chicken. But did you know that chicken actually is incredibly nourishing? First of all, it has a lot of collagen and gelatin and the low slow cooking that we did really brings that out. That is all extremely good for your immune system, for your joints, for all of those things and minerals. Remember minerals are what give you energy so that you can actually heal properly. Minerals are higher in the dark meat, which sometimes we avoid the dark meat, but it's higher in minerals.

It's also higher in fat soluble vitamins, which help to absorb minerals better. So again, all the edible parts over in that corner, all the knots over here. I'm gonna do a little bit of breaking down, but I need to show you the breast portion. So you can see how beautiful this looks. It just falls off the bone. Can you see that? So pulling out the wishbone, everybody wants the wishbone right there, but I actually slice this right along that grain. and just put that on the plate and usually that's the part people are oohing and eyeing is this this breast meat that you're going to put right over here on the plate make it look gorgeous or not so gorgeous it really doesn't matter because it's probably your family and they are just ready to dig into this.

So chicken edible portions go over here, the other portions go over there. I'm gonna show you what we're gonna do with that in just a moment. We're only using half of the chicken for this meal and you're gonna see why. Remember, we have to actually get three meals out of this and I'm gonna show you how.

Serving Meal One: Chicken, Potatoes, Carrots, and Gravy 9:08

So I'm gonna keep breaking this down and then we're gonna come back. Okay, I have half of this chicken broken down. Can you see how much chicken in this is? This is a lot of chicken and this is only half of it. So this is going to go with the potatoes and carrots. We're gonna go make some gravy right now. This is meal number one, probably 20 to 30 minutes max once I hit the ground running in the kitchen tonight. All right, what are we gonna do with the rest of this? We are actually going to use this to make broth, but first we have to get this crock pot emptied out.

So let's go start on our gravy. This is going over here. It still has some parts and pieces. Doesn't matter because that's all gonna get strained out. So all of that's gonna get strained out, but here's the interesting part. It's gonna go right back in the crock pot. So strain it out. You now have Just the drippings. Look at how much came off of that chicken. Isn't that amazing? We added no water to that crock pot. So much coming off of that chicken. I actually usually will add a little bit of the potato water, maybe just a little bit of other water to this one, but today we're going to just use it straight from those drippings.

So I'm going to turn this on. Now, I like to use cornstarch to thicken my gravy. The reason is, is I largely eat gluten-free, so you can use cornstarch to make a gravy. All this is is cornstarch and water. You can see that you have to stir it up just a bit. Now the interesting thing about all starches, whether it be gluten, you know, wheat flour or cornstarch, is that they have to get to a certain temperature to actually start to grab the water up. When they grab the water is when the gravy gets thicker.

So if I add this to this broth right now, we're going to think that we don't actually have enough cornstarch because it's not grabbing up the water and getting thicker. We have to get this boiling first before we add the cornstarch and then it will thicken that fast and you can tell immediately how much you actually need to use. So again, we have the cornstarch ready to go. I have the crock pot back over here. Getting rid of that strainer. We're no longer using that. We'll put that over in the sink.

Now we're going to take all of this and put it back into the crock pot. I'll break out all of the rest of this chicken. I just wanted you to see that I really only used half of this chicken. I'll break this all out, but all of the bones, all of the stuff that's still on here, everything is going to go back into this crock pot. You notice I did not wash the crock pot, right? Why? Why would I wanna wash it? Why do I take that extra stuff? We don't need to. Everything's going back in here. I'm gonna fill that.

about three quarters the way up with water all the way up to here. I'm gonna turn it on low and I'm gonna let that cook for 20 hours. So it's gonna go from now until tomorrow's dinner when we finally started talking about chicken soup, right? This episode's about chicken soup, but I needed to show you how you can do all of this and make more than just that soup because again, all of these ingredients are so medicinal. We're still talking about it. I'm gonna go finish up that gravy back there and then we're gonna come back and make meal number two from the same chicken, same carrots, potatoes.

You'll see how this goes. All right, I finished breaking this up. And honestly, I often just do this with my hands, pick the last little bits off. It was just a little too hot at first. So I get the last little bits of chicken and everything out of here. Okay, the mystery carrot tops, where are they going? right in with the broth. Why? That brings more minerals, more flavor, vitamin A with those carrots. We want everything we can possibly pack into that broth. So all of this is going in. Again, like I said, we're covering it entirely with water.

We're cooking it on low for as long as your crock-pot will cook all night long. And you'll be amazed to see the broth that comes out of here tomorrow with nothing more than just leftovers today. Alright, meal number one is in the books, right?

Turning Leftovers into Chicken Pot Pie 13:03

We have the chicken, potatoes, gravy, carrots, delicious meal, your family was raving about it, it didn't take too long, but you also had tomorrow's dinner in the works already going. Now, I don't know about you, but growing up, we had leftover day. I hated it. My mom just lined up all the leftovers from the week all around the barn. We had to go and like just dish it up and here mix and refried beans with chicken noodles sit like it just it was gross. So what if we actually turn leftovers into something incredible?

Incredible that your family looks forward to that's what we're doing We're gonna take the other half of the potatoes that we cooked remember We only used half of them for that meal. We're gonna chop them and just bite-sized pieces That's all we're doing with these you can tell they're so easy to cut because they're already cooked So this is all gonna go in the pan with some leftover chicken you see that I've got some leftover chicken in there So in the pan or in the bowl that goes right now along with those carrots.

This is going to make chicken pot pie now I don't know anybody who doesn't like chicken pot pie. And if that's on the table tomorrow night, your family is going to cheer and you don't have to do a thing for it. Leftover gravy, great. That's now what holds all this chicken pot pie together. So this is the base. Whatever veggie you have, I've thrown broccoli in here, peas, anything else. This is the chicken pot pie base. That's gonna go into the pan right here. Notice this is all cooked and I had to do nothing for it.

So this is gonna go into my fridge tonight and I'll cover it. It'll pop back in the oven for about 25 minutes tomorrow and I have no cooking or prep or dishes to do. All done. Okay, we're gonna get this out of the way because we are going to make a delicious cheddar biscuit topping for this. I know, your family's gonna wonder who in the world showed up in their kitchen. Salt, baking powder, garlic powder, flour, you can use gluten-free, regular, whichever you'd prefer, and some milk. I'm actually using some oat milk.

You can use whatever milk you want. We're going to mix this together just a little bit here. We're going to pour in that milk. You don't wanna overwork this, so we're just mixing this together. This is not anything we're gonna roll out. You can see how easy you can absolutely make biscuits. We're gonna get this mixed together. It's gonna be really rough. That's fine, because you're gonna see what we're gonna do with it. Then we're gonna mix the cheddar cheese in. Now this, I grated myself. Why? Because there's a lot of cornstarch and other things that are on that grated cheese at the grocery store.

It doesn't take long. and it's less expensive when you actually grate it yourself. So we're gonna mix that cheddar cheese into those biscuits. I can see I've got a little bit of flour in the bottom that I need mixed in here. Gonna make sure this is all mixed in. And now this is drop biscuits that are gonna go on top of this mixture that we just made from leftovers. How long did this take me? Did you time that? Four minutes total. Now this is going to be ready to go. I'm going to just make little biscuits that are going to sit on top of here.

You can spread them out. These are going to puff up with that baking powder and are going to cook absolutely deliciously that cheddar cheese is going to melt into there. You can do it without cheddar cheese if you want, but I'm just spreading this out. You can see how fast and easy this is. I just use my hands. I'm spreading it out over top of this. Now you have a cheddar biscuit topped pot pie made 100% from leftovers. No more leftover bar as your kids are going around and grumbling about having to eat it.

This is going to cook for about 20 minutes in the oven. That's all I'm gonna do today. So I'm gonna cover this for the night, put this in the refrigerator. It's gonna go in the oven tomorrow night, 25 minutes till dinner. Alright, we're finally to the soup.

Making Grandmau2019s Chicken Soup and Broth 17:08

Have you been wondering why in the world it's taken us so long to get here? Well, you can just start right here. But I really wanted you to see how you can take a chicken, turn it into three meals, and every single one of those meals is medicine. Because, as you're going to see, there's so much medicinal value in all of the things that go into chicken soup. So let's start cutting some veggies. We're gonna cut an onion, some celery, some carrots. We're gonna use our leftover chicken. We're gonna turn this into a soup along with the broth that we've been cooking overnight.

First of all, let's talk about an onion. So an onion, what medicine is in this onion? First of all, it's very antimicrobial. What that means is it kills bugs. The onion is actually also really important for your cells signaling. It tells your immune system what to do. Isn't that interesting? So when you have an onion in things, your cells go, ah, I know what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to go fight that thing that's coming around. This is why so many menus and meals and recipes start with an onion.

Isn't that fascinating? So we're going to cut this onion ready to saute. We just want it in small pieces, ready to go into that pan. I'm going to start that pan behind me and we're going to get this heated up and ready to go. Remember, we always heat the pan first and then heat up a little oil and then we add what we're gonna add to it. Now celery, I'm gonna show you a bit of a trick. I don't really love celery, but if you can get all the strings out, so what I do is I just break off a little bit and then I pull all of these strings out.

This is what doesn't taste very good. If you can get rid of that, it's literally like a whole new veggie. So I'll do it from both sides. Get rid of all of those strings. You will be shocked at how much you actually enjoy celery. So we're taking all the strings out and then we're going to just chop these up. And I actually really like to put these two together. in that pan because we're gonna just saute them very quickly. We don't wanna spend any more time than we have to. You know how I work. The faster, the better.

Get those strings out, string that all the way up, take it from the top side down, take as many strings out as you can get. You know, you're not getting every single string out, but you're getting a lot of them out. We're gonna cut that, saute this, we're gonna put it all together in that pan because we want all the medicine. Now, what's coming from celery? Celery is one of the most mineral-rich things that you can eat. This is why there's this fat about drinking celery juice. Why celery juice? Incredibly rich in minerals.

Did you know that? So when you're adding celery, it's not just for that weird crunch. You know, we used to have celery in salads and I think, why in the world did you put that in there? Well, it actually fills you up with some minerals. So let's put the onion, the celery in the pan. You can see that already sizzling. We're gonna saute that up while we're waiting for that. We're gonna prep a couple of carrots. That'll go in there also. This is what we're using for... The soup, now why carrots? Full of vitamin A.

The genome vitamin A is very good for eyesight, but it's also good for healing. All of those fat soluble vitamins help us to utilize minerals better. So let's talk about all of the medicinal values here. So now we have the ions. We know that helps us signal, that helps our immune system know what to do. Celery full of minerals. Why minerals? Neurals carry electrons into our cells. They literally recharge us so your cells and body can be up for the fight. The onion also killed bugs. We want that if we're dealing with viruses with bacteria.

The vitamin A helps us to get minerals into the cell, which recharge the cells and give us the energy that we need to do the work that we need to do. Chicken. What's coming along in that chicken? Well, proteins actually. There's a lot of amino acids, and chicken has some particularly potent amino acids in them. They're very good for enabling the cells to do the job of healing better. They're very good for immune system strength. They're good at all of that. So glycine, they're good for also detoxing, helping your body get rid of what's not helping it to stay well.

All of these things come with that chicken. The broth. Now, honestly, the broth is the star of the show. The broth has amazing collagen, gelatin, very good for cell health, also very good for gut health, and, like I'm always interested in, tooth and bone health. So we want that collagen, that gelatin, and all the minerals that come from soaking and cooking those bones slowly. Low and slow is the key for broth. Now, all of this is looking really good. We're going to go back over here and stir these veggies.

We want them just to be a little bit cooked and then we're going to add those carrots in. Doesn't that just say medicine? Honestly, just the colors of that alone. Veggies are cooking. While they're cooking, we're actually gonna do something else. We're gonna start working on the broth part of this. Remember what this is. This is the crock pot that has the bones, the water, all the spices, everything that's creating the magic. So this has been cooking for nearly 20 hours. We're gonna just filter everything out of this, including those Carrot tops.

So I've already taken some of the bones out of this, but this is our broth. It is full of minerals, full of good fats, and this is the key, full of those spices, remember, that we put on originally. So we get the antimicrobial action of the garlic powder, of the onion powder, the paprika at the time. All of those things are actually good for your body too, and they taste delicious. Now I'm just gonna basically break this up into this broth, There's sometimes things I don't want in there, so we're gonna keep those out.

But I'm putting the chicken into the broth. This is the leftover chicken. Remember, we're still working with one chicken here. So this is the leftover chicken. It's full of spices and all of that deliciousness. Also, the good health that comes along with what we already have talked about. That goes into the bowl. We're gonna add those veggies in. You can add noodles if you want. Noodles are a great way to actually kind of beef up the meal, but we're not gonna add them in yet. So veggies, I don't need them completely cooked.

I just want them a little softened. They're gonna go into the pan because we're gonna cook this all together. That's going on. the stove and we're going to cook this until it's mixed in and those veggies are soft. Then we add the noodles. I'm also going to add some poultry seasoning. Why? Well, the answer's in the name. It's to season poultry. A couple of bay leaves. Instead of using three or four different kinds of spices, that poultry seasoning has it mixed all in together. I will tell you, this is full of nutrients and this is why When you are filling well, the first thing you want is grandma's chicken soup.

This literally is medicine in a bowl. Now today, what have we done? We've taken one chicken that you may have been afraid of. We've turned it into chicken, potatoes, carrots, and gravy for meal number one. We then took half of those potatoes and carrots We mixed it with leftover chicken and leftover gravy, put a delicious cheddar biscuit topping on top, put it in the oven, and that's pot pie for meal number two. Meal number three is now the leftover chicken. The broth that we made from boiling and cooking those bones overnight added a few more really nutrient-rich veggies, some noodles if you want them, and you now have grandma's chicken soup, all from one chicken.

What I really want you to understand is that the medicine the grandmas used to use works. They did it because they saw that it made a difference. Not only are these foods really nourishing, But we just feel comforted. This warm broth is actually really easy in our digestive tract. It helps us digest better and heals our guts. It also makes us feel like somebody cares for us. And honestly, a part of healing is feeling like we are working on getting better and somebody is helping us to get there. So all of these things together equal medicine right from your grandma's chicken soup and more.

Let's come back and check out everything we made today. Today was all about grandma's chicken soup but we multiplied grandma's chicken soup not only what we're able to make out of one chicken but also the nutrients from one meal to two meals to three. And I can guarantee your family is not going to complain about leftovers done like this. So remember, food is medicine and that medicine can be absolutely delicious. Thank you for joining me today in my kitchen. My whole mission is just to help you live well and hopefully we can do it together one bite at a time.

Let's give this chicken a try. Literally so good.