Cream of chicken soup, real cream of chicken soup, doesn’t come from a red and white can, folks. Real cream of chicken soup is homemade, from scratch and lovingly tended as it simmers. Buttery, rich with the flavor of chicken, and irrepressibly smooth, it’s a nourishing dish with an old-fashioned, and almost timeless charm (skip straight to the recipe).
Growing up, the only creamed soups served up in our middle-income household came straight from Campbell’s and usually ended up in casseroles, mixed with polished rice, pasta or corn chips and a bag of frozen vegetables. They were gelatinous, semi-solid masses that retained the shape of the can as they plopped out into the saucepan. Those cream of chicken and cream of mushroom soups drew what meager flavor they could offer from refined salt, monosodium glutamate and yeast extracts. And to achieve their peculiar semi-solid state, the manufacturer included even more industrial additions: modified wheat starch, vegetable oil and partially-hydrogenated cottonseed and soybean oils – a fearful slurry courtesy of modernized food processing. So, for years beyond my food transformation, I cringed at the thought of those cream-of-watchamacallit soups, and just couldn’t bring myself to develop a homemade version of cream of chicken or any other soup.
This past Saturday, the Paragon People’s Fair – an annual community flea market, of sorts – took place. Always a sucker for yard sales and thrift shops, I count the days leading up to the fair with breathy anticipation. There’s the Army / Navy surplus booth which also stocks used guitars and weather-worn toy trucks for little boys. There’s the KBUT CD swap, and the HCCA bake sale. There’s the raw honey booth and the soap makers. There’s homespun and hand-dyed yarns. I visit the booth with the vintage (and ridiculously overpriced) kitchen gadgets, whose proprietor nearly bares her teeth in a sneer every time you so much as glance at at an old silver spoon or embroidered napkin. I have a sneaking suspicion that she doesn’t really want to part with any of it and that her husband has put her up to it all in effort to clear their basement for a foosball table. But my very favorite booth is the used book sale hosted by the Friends of the Library. I always find something good there, usually lurking in a musty old box beneath the table.
As my real food lovers on facebook already know, at this year’s book sale I was able to land a first edition copy of James Beard’s Fireside Cook Book, first published in 1949. So in some anachronistic turn of grace, it sits next to my iMac along with my other treasured vintage cookbooks like Meta Given’s Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking and a 1960 copy of the Ladies’ Home Journal Cook Book. Unlike the others, the Fireside Cook Book is still in print. Sure, my copy is a little worse for the wear: its pages are stained with the successes and failures of cooks before me and its binding is nearly falling off, but I’d expect the same from any well-loved cookbook. I wouldn’t trust a clean cookbook, free from sticky pages and water stains; after all, it must not have got much use.
So as I was gingerly thumbing through the pages so as not to damage them further, I happened across Beard’s recipe for cream of chicken soup. It looked beautiful: full of butter, cream, fresh chicken and leeks. It wasn’t thickened with flour or starch, but egg yolks. All the recipes in the book are lovely and speak to a time when the American food system was changing – when mothers still insisted upon cod liver oil daily, liver once a week and fresh eggs for breakfast, and just about the time vegetable shortening, marshmallow fluff and parboiled rice would become the rage (though Beard doesn’t call for these ingredients in his book). In an instance, I decided I’d conquer my fear of the gelatinous, lumpy condensed cream soups of my childhood and try a real, honest-to-goodness homemade cream of chicken soup.
Cream of Chicken Soup
Adapted from James Beard’s Fireside Cook Book, this homemade cream of chicken soup is gentle and soothing in its flavor, deeply comforting and satisfying. While my adaptation includes more vegetables and more egg yolks than the original, you’ll find that either version provides that beautiful, filling nourishment that can even satisfy the soul on a chilly, rainy autumn afternoon.
Ingredients:
- 1 whole pasture-raised stewing chicken, about 3 to 4 pounds (see sources)
- 1 leek
- 2 or three whole cloves
- 5 or 6 stalks of celery, including leaves
- 3 or 4 large carrots, including tops
- 1 medium yellow onion, including top
- 2 tablespoons butter (see sources)
- 6 egg pastured yolks, beaten
- 2 cups heavy cream, preferably raw (see sources), not ultra-pasteurized
- unrefined sea salt, to taste
- minced fresh chives or parsley, to serve
Equipment:
Method:
- Rinse the chicken thoroughly and pat it dry before placing it in your stock pot, covering it completely with fresh, clean and very cold water (about one and one-half gallons).
- Stud the leek with whole cloves, and place it in the stock pot along side the stewing chicken. Add the celery leaves, onion top and carrot tops to the water.
- Slowly simmer the clove-studded leek, celery leaves, onion top and carrot tops in the water, uncovered, until the chicken is completely cooked and tender to the bone, about two hours.
- Once the chicken is tender, remove it from the the stockpot and allow it to cool. Remove the bay leaves, celery leaves, onion top and carrot tops from the broth, straining it if necessary. Discard the vegetable matter, but continue simmering the broth, uncovered, while you prepare the remaining ingredients.
- As the chicken cools, prepare the vegetables by peeling and mincing the carrots and mincing the onion and celery stalks as well.
- Melt the butter in a cast iron skillet until it foams, and toss the minced vegetables into the pan. Fry the vegetables in butter until they become fragrant and tender, about five minutes. Remove them from the heat and allow them to cool.
- Once the chicken has cooled, remove its meat, saving the bones to roast for another round of stock.
- Place the chicken meat and cooled vegetables into a food processor and pulse until they’re finely ground. If you have no food processor, you can mince the chicken and vegetables finely.
- Stir the vegetables and chicken meat back into the simmering broth and turn off the stove.
- Temper the beaten eggs by stirring a spoonful of broth into the eggs, then pouring the mixture of eggs and broth into the simmering soup.
- Gently stir two cups of heavy cream into the broth and serve, dressed with minced fresh herbs and seasoned with unrefined sea salt.
YIELD: one gallon soup to feed about eight people.
TIME: about two and a half hours.
VARIATION: If you are sensitive to dairy, consider replacing the butter with coconut oil and the heavy cream with coconut milk for an alternative.
Jenny, this sounds divine! Of course, there actually are REAL cream of anything soups! Now I can make some casseroles. I suppose I could do something similar for cream of mushroom or celery, too? So making the soup this way, are you actually getting twice the amount of stock? Will the later stock with just the bones have a higher mineral content than the stock in the soup? Thanks for posting this. Will you post some more recipes from this book? I love old cookbooks, too. We just scarfed on some sweet and sour beef heart. The recipe came from a book written in 1971.
I bet you could do the same for cream of mushroom or celery. It’s not quite as thick as the condensed soups, but it is wonderfully good. You’ll have to share your beef heart recipe, too. I’ve got a lamb heart lurking in my freezer. I love how many vintage cookbooks even contain entire sections devoted to organ meats.
I’m THRILLED to find this today! I’ve just been bemoaning the red and white cans, because my mother rarely bought boxed stuff, but she would make ‘tuna chow mein,’ using campbell’s cream of celery.
I’ve been dismayed lately to find that it still has MSG! I buy it anyways, though, but its a sad deal.
One also has to be careful of their tuna choices…now there’s soy in it! I have found a canned tuna that is just tuna and water, albeit a bit more expensive.
I can’t wait to try this!
There’s soy in canned tuna now? Gross!
I make a super delicious cream of mushroom soup that is thickened by using yukon potatoes in the recipe. I also used raw cashew cream in place of heavy cream when I was eliminating dairy from my diet for a short time. Can’t wait to try this cream of chicken recipe
mmm…. I’m SO doing this soon!
Let me know how it turns out for you. The first night I served it, my 5-year old powered through three bowls.
Looks like I know what I’m doing for my freezer soup this week. I will complete everything but adding the cream, then portion and freeze. I add cream to cream soups after I have reheated from the freezer.
Sounds so wonderful. With coconut oil, coco milk and organic chicken it can even be healthy.
I have resisted making comments… I have read the recipes and tried several, and compared many more to my own lovingly developed over the last 60 some odd years (I’m well over 80 now) and wished some of them were in the three cookbooks I wrote, but today for the first time I read beyond the recipes to garner a bit of the taste of the author’s recipe for mind and heart, and fell in love all over again. You remind me of all the cooks that went before me in my family, reaching out to nourish the soul while feeding the body. Thank you for being you and for making your way into my kitchen.
Pat, your comment, obviously written with such passion – I want to reach through the computer and hug you
Oh gosh – thanks so much for sharing this. I am abhorred by the cream of chicken soup in a can, and I have tried several homemade recipes, without success. I’m looking forward to giving this a try!
So excited to try this recipe – I have my free range chickens scheduled to be butchered tomorrow! Yay for fresh chicken and this awesome-sounding recipe! Thanks for sharing it!
I want that book! How amazing that you got your hands on a first edition. Thanks for the recipe. It sounds amazing. I’m making it tomorrow!!!
This sounds amazing. I am always looking for good recipes for soups that are made in a traditional wholesome way. Do you think this would stay well frozen? I would love to make multiple batches to store in the freezer. Also what about making a creamy broccoli version as well? Do you think you could use this same recipe for that?
I would probably add the yolks and cream once the soup was ready to be reheated, otherwise they could break during freezing resulting in an unappealing texture. I bet you could definitely use this same basic recipe to prepare broccoli soup, just reserve the chicken meat for another use: chicken salad, omelets, stirfries.
The soup looks lovely and I will try it, but your description was what really caught me up. Eloquent. Thank you!
Thank you so much, Judy!
This really sounds wonderful! I have only attempted making creamy soups using flour as a thickener before. I’m fairly new to cooking with ‘real foods’ and am wondering what do you do with the egg whites? So many recipes call for the yolks and I’m sure the whites are not wasted. I am learning so much from your website. Thank you!
I typically store the whites in the freezer, occasionally using them to bind a tart (like this one: http://nourishedkitchen.com/fresh-fig-tart-almond-crust/#tartshell). Egg white contains avidin which blocks biotin absorption, so we tend to eat more yolks than whites.
This looks to be just the soup my family needs to keep us warm and content as the weather starts to turn cold and wet. Your description of casseroles made with “cream of..” soups also made me smile – they were a constant on the menu when growing up in a big family of 8 children,
I am hoping you can give some additional information about the egg yolks the recipe calls for – I am not familiar with the term “pastured”. Does it refer to pasteurized eggs or something else entirely? Where would I find such a thing?
Thanks for your help. I really enjoy your lovely blog and all the yummy recipes.
Sheryl –
The term “pastured” refers to hens that are raised outdoors on pasture with free access to fresh grass, sunshine and clean water. Being raised outdoors allows them to forage for shoots, sprouts, grasses, weeds, grubs and bugs. “Free-range” and most organic and conventional eggs you find in the grocery store have been laid by hens largely fed on grain, and often GMO grain at that, this results in a drastically reduced nutrient composition compared to the eggs laid by hens on pasture. Always choose farm-fresh, pastured eggs when you can.
Thanks, Jenny – your explanation was most helpfull. I’ll have to ask my friends for some of their hens’ eggs until I manage to raise my own – I had no idea there was such a difference (although it makes perfect sense).
oldfashionedpat brought tears to my eyes. That was very touching.
Sheryl: pastured eggs are from chickens which lived outside on real dirt (not a cement patio) and foraged for food in addition to their feed in the hen house.
This could be a really expensive soup. Whole chickens are $20 for me. But that’s for a roaster. My co-op also sells what they call “grillers”, which are cut up small birds. I think they leave out the necks & backs! Those can be about $8. I looked at the recipe and thought it would be very expensive. If I make sure I get a stewing chicken it would be better.
The cost of the soup would average about $3.00 – $3.50 a serving, all you need is a big green salad and a slice of sourdough bread, and that’s a $5 meal per person.
I wanted to suggest you scan that cookbook to save on the wear and tear. Make a pdf for yourself.
(If it’s out of copyright, you could maybe share it. You probably don’t want to mess with the legalities…)
I think there’s an internet library that has out of print books. That’s worth looking into.
This looks wonderful! It will be on my list of things to try…but I wonder how to cut it in half? I usually only cook for two, and I suspect the suspension of egg and cream in the warm soup it wouldn’t survive freezing and reheating well. I guess I could set aside half the meat and stock in the frig for other recipes, and then halve just the ingredients that go in at at the end.
I reheated the soup and didn’t notice an issue with the egg or cream; however, I also didn’t subject it to freezing. If I were to make it again, after having frozen it, I would definitely stir in the cream once the soup was reheated, and might do the same with the egg yolk. I bet you could cut this soup in half. Or even make the stock with the whole chicken, and pull off the meat, saving half the stock for another use and half the meat for chicken salads or stirfries or what have you.
This sounds delicious! This is the first time I’ve ever heard of a use for carrot tops besides composting.
Carrot tops are fantastic in soup stocks! Always save them – just stick them in a bag in your freezer, and add them to the stockpot as you need them.
You have no idea how thrilled I am to see this recipe! Yay!! Oh, I love cream of “…” soups. Chicken, mushroom, you name it. Thank you!! I will make it this weekend!
Let me know how it turns out for you. I’m hoping to try a cream of mushroom soup soon.
Just made this using coconut milk – had to add a lot of salt to bring out the flavor but once I did, the flavor was fantastic! Many thanks…
OldfashionedPat – I want to hug you!
You sound like my Mamaw that went to be with the Lord a few years ago. Boy, that woman could cook, and you felt love in every bite. I came along late in life and did not absorb much from her in the kitchen and I am sure feeling the loss now that I have two little ones of my own. Wish I had a Mamaw to call…
Jenny – I have this soup on the stove as we speak, and cannot wait to try it!
Darlene
I love creamed soups but the dairy does not agree with me. This alternative using the coconut oil and milk sounds divine. Coconut oil long ago came to live with us. Can’t wait to try this one.
This sounds wonderful! I am quite new at this so I want to make sure I’m not goofing up. You mention removing the bay leaves, but I didn’t see that in the recipe. How many do I add?
Also, I do not have cast iron, would stainless be okay?
Lastly, after reading your comments… I’m assuming if I prepare as written and then make other dishes and freeze it would be okay? I ask this because of the egg & cream coments.
Thanks for helping me in my real food journey!
Shelley~
Gather a shopping list to make this for next week, and noticed that bay leaves are not in the ingredient list, but step 4 talks about removing bay leaves?
I’ll have to fix that! Use 2 leaves.
Thanks
Just last month I was talking to my sister about how to recreate some of the “hotdish” recipes we ate growing up without using condensed canned soup. I could come up with healthy alternatives for everything but the cream of chicken part. Thanks for this recipe, it’s the missing link. Now with lacto-fermented mayo, pasture-raised chicken, farmer’s market broccoli, raw cheddar, and homemade croutons, I can make a truly divine “Chicken Divine”.
How I envy those of you who can buy raw milk. Here in Canada it is decidedly illegal to buy raw milk.
At any rate, my children react very badly to store-bought cow’s milk, but they drink goat’s milk without a problem. My difficulty is that goat *milk* is the extent of what I can find. No cream, no hard cheese, nothing like that. And to complicate it further, I have an anaphylactic reaction to nuts and seeds (so no coconut, hemp, almond, etc.)
So my question is — how vital is the cream? If this were made with milk, would it still be good?
I bet it would be great with the goat’s milk. I would certainly try it. With all those egg yolks, it should be plenty rich. Just my thoughts…
Let us know if you try it how it went!
I’m a novice in the kitchen and have not heard of using onion tops in cooking. Could you explain what the “onion top” is? Is it just wacking off a chunk of the onion? Or is it a part of the onion sticking out of the ground? Thanks for your help! This recipe sounds wonderful and I can’t wait to try it. I imagine I could use a similar approach for cream of mushroom soup.
Jenny – I’m thrilled that came across such a great treasure of a first edition of James Beard!!! Awesome! My husband will be absolutely thrilled when I make this for him after a hard day’s work in the cold outdoors. And, thanks for all of your dynamite recipe postings! I don’t reply like I should.
Jenny – I do have a question though about this soup recipe just to be sure to prepare as you perfected it. Wondering about the meaning of “tops” for both onions and carrots. I have white onions…does this mean the skins on the outside of the onion that would normally go into compost –or- do I need another type of onion –or- can I add the all of the green leafy portion of the leak? And, I always only get fresh, unbagged carrots with their green stalks/leaves still beautiful and fresh as can be…Are the “carrot tops” that of the green stalks/leaves portion of the carrots that go into the stock?
Jenny and all @ home chefs: After all of the egg “issues”, I try to only purchase “pasture raised” eggs….$6/dozen at only some of the Whole Foods (and haven’t found yet anywhere else) but OMG, sooooo worth it!!! If you think about it, it’s still an inexpensive meal for an egg dish/meal. So, my suggestion is to definitely make use of those delicious and nutritious egg whites by adding them to your next dish of scrambled eggs, omelet, etc. I’ve even made muffin size “Vegetable Quiche Cups” that only calls for egg whites and I even freeze them. Upon waking up, defrost a couple and devour within an hour….or I take them for lunch, too and defrosted in the frig by then…..very tasty, filling (protein!!) and nutritious.
Jenny and all @ home chefs: Being in Illinois, we don’t legally have raw daily (other than cheese aged 60+ days) products either. So, I go to the next best, organic dairy products.
Jenny and all @ home chefs: Any other suggestions to share with all of us?
Jenny and all @ home chefs: LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!!!! this site – xo!
I made this two weekends ago and it was DELICIOUS!!! I froze some of it, and will be having it for lunch this afternoon. I hope there isn’t as issue with the egg and the cream….. I plan on making it again this weekend, and based on the comments, I thnk I will make half of it with chicken, and the other half with Portabello mushrooms. You have such amazing recipes on here, I only wish I had a huge family to cook for, instead of just me and the dog
(Yes, he gets some too.)
I love reading all the recipes and posts following. I learn so much. I too am fairly new to this way of cooking. I love the idea of making cream of chicken soup. Am going to buy everything today and make it this afternoon (except in a smaller quantity). Keep up the good work, Jenny!
I love your site, but I struggled with this recipe. Mine was not as thick or as smooth as your picture. The texture is odd with the small pieces of chicken (I suspect mine had some scrambled egg too, but I think my heat was too high). I expected a thick, creamy consistency and it isn’t that. It tastes fine (although I needed quite a bit of salt) but didn’t quite hit the spot for me.
What about if you just put it through a food processor? It would smooth it out and then you can add salt to it while you process it.
Hi there. When looking at this delicious recipe, it brought to mind another question I have. Do you know how to make a real food version for condensed milk when it is called for in a recipe? I only see powdered milk substitutes on line and I don’t want to use that either. Margaret
I just made this soup just then and it’s sooooo good. I cheated a little bit and used pre made stock and a free range BBQ chook but next time I want to do it the proper way. I just found you blog and I love it
Jenny, can I use this in place of the condensed cream of chicken soup within a recipe? Or is it mainly more of a “main meal” soup? What would I need to alter to use it as a substitute for the cream of chicken in that case? Sadly, I’m the only one in the family that’s a fan of soup (although I’m slowly winning over a few of us), but I’d love to use this in casseroles or other dishes.
I know this is an older post, but the recipe sounds delicious! You mention saving the bones to roast for another round of stock. How do you go about doing this? Do you actually “roast” the carcass in the oven for an hour, then add it back to a pot with fresh water and fresh veggies for another round of simmering?
This soup is simmering on our stove right now! I bought my first “pastured stewing chicken” from a local farm where we get our milk and I can’t wait to see how this turns out. We had some nice snow flurries today and my 3 year olds are going to help me making some pumpkin pie for dessert. Perfect weather for a hearty nourishing soup!
Thanks for sharing the recipe.
I made this and ended up with about 2 gallons of thin soup with very little flavor. I only used about 1 gallon of water cook the chicken. Any suggestions?