Chicken Stew for Fall... or anytime!

My son Seth married his beautiful bride Lacey at harvest festival/I love fall style wedding at the Genesee Country Village and Museum in Mumford, NY.

Now I won't mention here that Seth HATED it when I took him to the museum and village as a kid.

He then ended up becoming a history teacher and getting married there.

God has a GREAT sense of humor!

The dinner caterer did a great presentation and served chicken stew and beef stew in Big Hollowed Out Pumpkins.

Yes, the Pumpkins were the soup tureens! And it was awesome!

Well, we've got pumpkins galore, but I didn't use them for serving.... I used Revere Ware! But here's a fun and fairly easy way to do a roasted chicken stew when you don't have leftover roast chicken, but you want the stew!

This made 5 quarts, so feel free to cut recipe in half as needed:

4 large chicken breasts

1 gallon water
1/3 cup Chicken base
Garlic to taste
Parsley to taste
Pepper to taste (I'm keeping these obscure because the chicken base is going to give your stock a nice, rich taste and it's already salty. I added about a tablespoon of granulated garlic, three tablespoons of parsley and about a tablespoon and a half of pepper. Pepper and chicken stew/soup dishes are amazing together!)

Place chicken breasts in shallow baking dish. Season as desired. I used some salt/pepper/chopped onion. Add about 1 cup of water, cover and bake for about 40 minutes.

Make soup base by mixing chicken base with water, adding seasonings, and whisking. Then heat to boiling.

While heating, peel 4-5 lbs. of potatoes, and about 2-3 pounds of carrots. Cut into chunk sized pieces.

Add to boiling chicken stock.

Bring back to boiling. Reduce heat slightly and cook until potatoes and carrots are just about done, almost fork tender.

Add celery, mushrooms, corn at this time, if desired. I added celery and fresh corn cut off the cob. I dropped the corn into the chicken bath until it changed to dark gold, then fished it out (with tongs, not Dave's fishing line!) cooled it, and sliced off the corn. The corn and celery give a nice background "crunch" to balance the stewiness of everything else.

Cut corn from cob.... or just throw in a bag of frozen corn, LOL!

When chicken is done, cut or fork it into bite-sized chunks and add chicken and drippings to soup/stew pan.

Mix 2 cups water with about 1/2 - 2/3 cup of flour. Whisk together until smooth, about a minute.

Slowly pour flour/water into stew pot, stirring with big spoon, until desired thickness is reached.

Turn off heat.

Let sit about ten minutes.

This can be used a pot pie filling.... (if you add a package of mixed veggies, it will look like pot pie filling, too) or stew straight from the pot, or as the base for a rich, Sunday-dinner style Chicken and biscuits.

It is amazingly good! And when you heat up the leftovers, do it gently, do not forget that your new burner is a "power" burner and scorch the bottom.

:)

And here we have some fun fall pics!!!!

ZZ, helping me on the farm:

Our little front yard water garden... always a good place for frog hunts!

Hello, Pumpkin!

And it wouldn't be a day without checking in with The Mighty Finn!!! First, "Fearless"... Those short, little legs are so cute and stubby and brave!!!

And here... Studying marine biology for future generations!