Tales for a Shattered World

Chicken and Leek Soup

Ingredients:

2 cups cooked chicken, cubed

2 cups cubed potatoes

3 stalks celery, diced

2 cups leeks, diced

2 cups (tightly packed) cabbage, diced

6 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

6 cups chicken stock

2 tbsp salt + more to taste

2 tsp black pepper + more to taste

1 tsp white pepper + more to taste

1 small bundle thyme

1 small bundle green onions

Juice from 1 lemon

Steps

Add chicken, potatoes, celery, leeks, garlic, and cabbage to slow cooker. Add first batch of seasoning and stir to combine.

Tie thyme together with kitchen twine, knot green onions together or tie with kitchen twine, and add to the top of the pot.

Add lemon juice and stock, liquid should fully cover all the ingredients. If it doesn't top up with water.

Turn slow cooker on low, cover, and set a timer for 4 hours.

After 4 hours, taste test for seasonings, add more as needed.

Cover and set heat to high for 1 hour, or until potatoes and cabbage are tender.

Remove and discard the remaining thyme and green onion bundles.

Serve as is, or add pasta.

Pasta option:

Boil the pasta of your choice until about 2 minutes shy of preferred doneness. Add a portion of soup to a sauce pan, combine with pasta, and bring to a boil. Cook together for 2 minutes, then serve immediately.
Pasta should always be cooked and stored separately, or it will suck up the broth and get mushy in the fridge.

Commentary:

If this looks like a recipe to get rid of all the aging vegetables in my fridge, guess what. The cabbage and potatoes can easily be subbed out for more celery and white onion if you're looking for a lighter dish; if you're cooking with potatoes, you probably won't need to add pasta since the starch element is already baked in. You could also add a cup or so of white wine, but I wasn't thinking ahead and drank the last of my bottle the night prior.
I don't usually do dump and go recipes, but this is one of them. If you really wanted to, you could pre-sear some of the veg prior to get a bit of color on them, but I don't want to scrub the extra pan.