Chicken soup

I made some baby chicken soup this week for Elijah and Molly. Molly loved it! She has really been eating lots of new and different foods lately. She still prefers things to be pretty soft, but she is eating lots of finger foods and is trying lots of things. (We did learn that she doesn't like rice yet, unless it's been through the grinder - she carefully took each individual grain out of her mouth and put it back on the tray.) We are using the baby food grinder so that she can eat more of what we're eating, too.

Here's a long, but sometimes funny, video of Miss Molly eating her soup. Enjoy!





For the soup, I made some adjustments to a couple of Rachel Ray chicken soup recipes that we like (like this one) to make it suitable for baby food. This time, I knew I was going to be putting Molly's into the blender, but soon I'll stop blending it and start dicing the chicken and veggies super small. Right now, I just do a fine chop, small enough for Elijah to get several different things in his spoon. =) Here's my version:


Baby Chicken Noodle Soup

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, 1 turn of the pan

1/2 medium onion, finely chopped

1 rib celery, finely chopped

1 carrot, peeled and diced

[When Molly gets a little older, I'll start adding a half a bay leaf and a little poultry seasoning.]

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

3 cups low sodium chicken or vegetable stock

leftover chicken, diced

[When Molly's older and I'm not putting hers in the blender, I'll add some frozen peas, too.]

Heat a medium soup pot or sauce pan over medium high heat. Add olive oil. Add the onions, celery and carrots, adding them to the pot as you chop them. [Add bay leaf and season with salt, pepper and poultry seasoning], cook 5 to 6 minutes to soften them a bit. Add flour and cook another minute then whisk in 1/2 cup stock and cook off a minute more. Add remaining stock and put a lid on the pan or pot and raise heat to bring to a quick boil. Add chicken [and peas].

I cooked about a cup of tiny pasta shapes [I use either ditalini or the tiny stars or alphabet pasta I found in the Mexican food aisle - I wish I could find some tiny pasta somewhere that was whole wheat, but no luck yet] separately, then added about half of the pasta to the soup. I divided the soup in half - half for Molly and half for Elijah. I added the remaining pasta to Elijah's half, and it was ready. Molly's half I put in the blender on a low setting just until most of the chunks were gone. Then I made some pastina and added it to the blended soup. Done!

It sounds kinda long and involved, but it was actually pretty easy. This recipe made 2 servings of soup for Elijah and 4 for Molly. If you were making it for just one baby you could freeze some for later.