Munchie Monday: Quick and Easy Chicken Soup

 Late this afternoon I learned that I friend was sick.  I had the impression I should make some chicken soup but it was so late in the day I decided to get a rotisserie chicken to make it.  This is what I did:

Quick and Easy (and delicious!) Chicken Soup

In the 8-quart Instant Pot I put 2 quarts of homemade vegetable broth along with
3 bay leaves
1/4 cup dried onion flakes
1 Tablespoon rubbed sage
Heaping spoon (probably a little more than a tablespoon if I had measured it) Better Than Bouillon Roasted Vegetable paste

1-plus teaspoon granulated garlic
1/2 teaspoon crushed rosemary
1/2 teaspoon ground thyme

I set these ingredients going on the Sauté feature and headed to Food Lion where I was in hopes of finding a rotisserie chicken still available.

(To facilitate stability as well as keep my hands off shopping carts, I use this stroller with a flat-bottomed reusable grocery bag to do the shopping.  This helps in several ways, including but not limited to, not buying a million extra ingredients because they won't fit into the bag!  It IS possible to put enough heavy stuff in the bag so that it is rugged to carry, but that is what makes the stroller such a help!  On this trip I only got the rotisserie chicken, a big bag of baby carrots, and some cans of tomatoes and also pineapple tidbits for another meal. I was in and out of the store in ten minutes and back at that house before the 30-minute Sauté feature was complete!)

There was a beautiful rotisserie chicken, in fact several to choose from.

1 Rotisserie chicken, skin removed and meat removed from bones and chopped fairly fine.  (Not the skin just the meat!). There was a LOT of meat so I did not use it all. To my view, the broth is the best part of any soup, especially chicken soup.

Put the bones in a strainer basket that fits into the Instant Pot.

Put the meat in the broth that had been simmering while I was away then  chopped up very finely two handfuls of baby carrots in the Ninja Express and put them in the IP on top of the meat.

Found an almost empty bag of whole kernel corn in the freezer and added it to the pot with the meat, etc. then put the basket of chicken bones on top.  It fit perfectly into the pot on top of the other ingredients.  The bones were not covered with broth so I put in 3 cups of water so they were submerged.

Since everything was already cooked except the carrots I set the pot on HIGH pressure for only 20 minutes and began cleaning up the kitchen then watched part of a YouTube video on a knitting concern I had.

When the timer went off I reduced heat manually with the little red steam escape valve which pushes the steam out to the side instead of straight up at the ceiling.  I tasted the hot broth.  It was SO GOOD.  At least to me.  At that point I put in perhaps a cup of leftover macaroni and cheese Dear One had had for his supper since I felt there needed to be some sort of starch in the soup.

After putting it into a jar I headed out to deliver it as quickly as possible as it was already after 7:00 PM and I wanted to be home before dark.  Not a fan of driving at night.

It made me happy to make this soup and give it to our friend.  I hope it was a blessing to the family.