Fumbling Toward Culinary Talent: Chicken and Bean Soup

I pretty much winged it today when I made some soup.

A while back I bought a "value pack" of chicken thighs, so I made some stock by simmering six chicken thighs in 8 cups of water. According to the instructions I had for making chicken stock, I threw in some stalks of celery, four carrots cut up into large chunks, one whole yellow onion chopped roughly, a bit of salt, and some cracked black pepper.

After two hours of simmering, I set aside the chicken thighs and strained the stock. I put the stock in a large crock pot and added some store-bought chicken stock that I had left over. 

I picked apart the six chicken thighs, chopped up all the good meat, and gave the less than desirable meat to Darby, my dog. The good meat went into the crock pot, and I got to work on putting the ingredients below into the pot:

1/2 yellow onion, finely chopped

1 clove of garlic, finely chopped

1 green bell pepper, finely chopped

1 can of dark red kidney beans, drained

1 can of great northern beans, drained

5 carrots, chopped into medallions

kosher salt to taste

cracked black pepper, approximately two tablespoons

herbs de Provence, approximately two tablespoons

smoked paprika, approximately one tablespoon

After cooking the soup in the crock pot on high for two hours, I turned it down to low and simmered it on low for four hours. 

Overall, it turned out pretty well. The thigh meat became stringy, but that's no big deal to me. When I make it again, I plan to add another can of kidney beans, maybe some frozen peas, and more carrots.