Fried fish and hush puppies in Mobile, rich cream sauces on everything in New Orleans and Jeni’s ice cream in Columbus, Ohio. It’s no mystery why even my most forgiving jeans were pulling at the seams.
I love soup so tried a recipe for weight loss soup with chicken that I’ll be making frequently. It’s a bowl of healthy and deliciousness: chicken, onion, carrots, ginger, broccoli and turmeric.
Active prep took me about 30 minutes, then it simmers for 30 minutes. You can easily leave the chicken out for a vegetarian version.
Weight Loss Chicken Soup
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, peeled and chopped
3 tablespoons fresh ginger, shredded or grated
4 garlic cloves minced
1 1/2 pounds boneless skinless chicken breast
2 quarts chicken broth
2 1/2 cups sliced carrots
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon sea salt
3 cups broccoli florets
1 1/2 cups frozen peas
Heat a large pot over medium heat and add olive oil. Then add chopped onions, ginger and garlic. Saute for 5-6 minutes to soften. Then add the raw chicken breasts, broth, carrots, apple cider vinegar, crushed red pepper, turmeric and 1 teaspoon sea salt.
Bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer for 20+ minutes, until the chicken breasts are cooked through. Then remove the chicken with tongs and set them on a cutting board to cool.
Add the broccoli and peas to the pot. Continue to simmer to soften the broccoli. Meanwhile, shred the chicken breasts with two forks, and stir it back into the soup. Once the broccoli is tender, taste, then salt and pepper as needed. Serve warm.
A few notes: I don’t like celery in soups so I left it out. If it’s your thing, you can add two cups of chopped celery. I also am not a huge fan of parsley. I kind of don’t get the point of it and I feel bad when I buy a huge bunch, use the little bit called for, and watch it slowly turn brown in my refrigerator.
Before our precious dog, Riley, died, I would try to feed it to him because I read parsley is good for a dog’s bad breath. He would have none of it and seemed blissfully unaware of the alienating nature of his hot doggy breath.
I’m a pretty lazy cook and don’t like to chop garlic, so I buy the kind that comes in a tube that can be found in the produce area. A nutritionist/cookbook author told me about it so I use it guilt-free. Sometimes when I’m really lazy I buy onions already chopped up.
Rather than those large containers of chicken broth, I buy Better Than Bouillon Organic Chicken Broth. It has excellent flavor and doesn’t go bad.
Enjoy! And thank me when you can fit into your jeans again.
– Jan Schroder, Editor-in-chief
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