Condensed Cream of Chicken Soup

Ever since I decided to eliminate as many processed foods from our diet as possible, I've been looking for a homemade version of this tinned soup, as I use it regularly in my crockpot cooking. Since the tinned version contains things I'd rather not have my children eating (artificial flavours and MSG, anyone?), I was really happy to finally find this version after several attempts that weren't as good. This is really close to the "real" thing, and to be honest, I think it tastes better :-)

Ingredients

1½ cups homemade chicken stock*
1 small onion, finely diced OR ¼ tsp onion powder
1 clove garlic, minced OR ¼ tsp garlic powder
1/8 tsp black pepper
¼ tsp salt, or less to taste
¼ tsp dried parsley or 1 tbs fresh parsley
dash paprika
1½ cups reduced fat milk
3/4 cup plain flour


Method

1. Boil chicken stock, 1/2 cup of the milk and the seasonings, for a minute or two (longer if you are using fresh onion and garlic).

2. In a bowl, whisk the remaining milk and flour until smooth. Add to the boiling stock and continue whisking briskly until the mixture boils and thickens.

3. Cool and refrigerate or freeze in portions until required.

Notes:

* You can obviously substitute bought stock but you won't be able to control the additives, fat or salt level as you could for homemade stock. Refrigerating freshly made stock and skimming off the fat when it is cold, will greatly reduce the fat content.

**This mixture makes around 3 cups, which is the equivalent of about two cans of condensed soup, so freezing it in 1.5 cup portions makes it easy to use in recipes. I make double this and freeze in four small, labelled containers.

Recipe from tammysrecipes.com