Smoked Chipotle Chicken Soup

On Sunday night, I found myself really emotionally drained.  There has been a lot of personal stuff going on in my life that haven't been the easiest to deal with.  I had a lot on my mind and I wasn't sure how to begin processing these thoughts.  I found myself in the kitchen rummaging in the fridge and the pantry.  I wasn't sure how or why I decided to make soup that evening but I felt myself calm down as I slowly began preparing this smoked chipotle chicken soup.

I started out by taking two boneless chicken breasts out of the freezer.  While I thawed them in the microwave, I brought an almost full carton of chicken stock and about four cups of water to a boil on the stove in my Dutch oven.

When the stock was boiling, I added the two chicken breasts to the stock to let them slowly poach.  While the chicken breasts were poaching, I got to work on the other ingredients.

First, I peeled and diced three potatoes leftover from my baked chipotle potato chips and set them aside.

Next, I chopped up one small yellow onion that I found in my fridge.  I looked in the freezer and I also found some leftover compound butter with caramelized shallots along with two leftover smoked chicken cilantro chipotle sausages.

I thawed the sausages in the microwave and sliced and halved the sausages.  I checked the temperature of the chicken breasts and when it was done poaching, I took the chicken out of the chicken stock and set the chicken breasts aside to cool.  While the chicken breasts were cooling, I added the diced potatoes to the broth to start cooking the potatoes through.  I also warmed up a pan on the stove with the leftover compound butter.  I added the chopped onion to the pan and sauteed them.  I eventually added the chicken sausage to the pan to crisp up the sausages.

I had a little less than a quarter of a bag of frozen spinach left and I added this to the Dutch oven with the chopped potatoes and chicken stock.

I then added the sauteed onion and chicken sausage to the pot.  I wanted to add some color to this soup so I looked in the pantry and found this:

My friend Megan had given me this can of fire-roasted adobo seasoned diced tomatoes from her pantry because she knew that this was something she would probably never use in her kitchen.  I thought that this would go perfectly with the smoked chicken sausage and I decided to add this to the pot as well.

I let these great ingredients simmer together on the stove while I pulled the chicken breasts.  This ended up being a lot of pulled chicken but I threw it all in the pot anyway!

I was going to add black beans to this soup but it was already thick enough with the pulled chicken and potatoes.  I seasoned the soup with both salt and pepper and gave it a good stir.  I put the cover on the Dutch oven and let the soup simmer for several hours before I let it cool and refrigerated it for the next day.  When the soup was simmering, the apartment was filled with the smell of the smoked sausage.

I had the soup for lunch on Monday and for dinner on Monday evening.

When I tasted the soup, it had almost of a split pea soup quality to it.  The smokiness of the sausage really added such great flavor to this soup!  It was snowing on Monday night so this hearty bowl of soup was definitely perfect for this blustery cold winter night.

Making the soup didn't make all of my problems go away but it helped me process my thoughts and clear my mind.  As cheesy as it may sound, there just might be something to the idea of "chicken soup for the soul".

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