Recipes For A Starving Writer: Lemon Chicken and Rice Soup

Soup is not always exciting stuff, but the combination of tangy lemon, tender chicken, and fluffy rice is a rather satisfying concoction. A pot of this for a single person can last for at least several dinners--it can either feed you for a week, or you can freeze it until needed. And if you run across some days in which you just don't feel like making anything, it's quite easy to pull this out of the freezer and nuke it. On top of that, it's reasonably healthy, it'll warm you up on a cold day, and it could help you fight a cold (depending on what you add to it--garlic would help a lot).

Sandwich not included.

How affordable it is may depend on what ingredients you have and what you can buy. The core ingredients would be chicken broth (which can be made from pre-existing chicken and vegetables), chicken of some kind, lemon juice (either squeezed from a lemon, or you could get away with buying a bottle of it), and rice. Ideally, you'd also want some vegetables (carrots, celery, onion, maybe other things, but I've made it just fine without having some of these on-hand). Additional spices (salt, dill, garlic, bay leaves) will make it taste good, but if you don't have any of these, its absence won't hurt you--it might just be a bit bland. Even then, I'd recommend tasting it and adjusting to your preference anyway with what you do have on-hand (if anything). Buying all the below ingredients would come out to about $25 or less depending on quantities and brands, and a lot of these things (especially spices) will be useful in many other dishes you make beyond this one. $25 or less, to feed you for a week or more--you can't find a better deal eating out.

To make, you will need a large stockpot. A large spoon or ladle will be useful here. You might need a sieve if you're making the broth from scratch. To squeeze lemons, you'd want a squeezing tool or juicer (doing this by hand is hard and ineffective--otherwise, you could cheat and get a bottle of lemon juice). A cutting board and knife will be necessary for chopping vegetables. Prep bowls would be useful, but not entirely necessary. Of course, you should have a bowl and spoon to eat from, and tupperware to store excess soup. If you expect to cook regularly, you should have all these tools to begin with. If you need all of this, it could cost up to $100, but a set of knives, a set of bowls, a set of silverware will last for years, and the price could be much less if you only buy one bowl and one spoon. That all depends on your situation. Tupperware, even in sets, run cheap. Buying the tools you need to make the soup is more like $55 or so--once again, these tools (a stockpot, ladle, lemon squeezer) can last for years and help you make meals over and over again, versus eating out every day. These things should be seen as long-term investments.

What I like to do is buy a rotisserie chicken (from Kroger, it's $5), eat the wings and legs over the course of a few days, then shred up the breast meat for the soup. You may not even need all this chicken for the soup, so one cheap chicken can last for an incredible number of meals. Just be sure to remove all bones, gristle, and skin before throwing it in the pot.

The recipe I've been using was one of the first hits I came across from a simply Google search. You can find many more variants all over the Internet, and chances are good I'll try a different recipe at some point.

Ingredients

• Broth (you can either buy some in a can, in a box, use bullion cubes, or follow the instructions to make your own). To make your own broth, you'll need:
• The chicken--see below
• 1 onion, cut into wedges
• 2 carrots, halved (maybe more for broth)
• 2 celery ribs (maybe more for broth)
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 2 bay leaves 
• Salt and pepper
• 1 whole chicken (3-4 lb) rinsed (cooked if you have the broth pre-done)
• 2/3 cup long-grain white rice (I've had no problem using Basmati rice for this, but be aware that other types may not turn out so well--brown rice would be a little too gloopy)
• Seasoning
• Salt
• Pepper
• Dill
• Bay leaves
• 2 tablespoons of lemon juice (can use more if you want more zing to it)

Directions

For broth:

1. Place the chicken, all the vegetables, garlic, bay leaves, 2 teaspoons of salt, 1 teaspoon of pepper, and 8 cups of water in your large stockpot
2. Bring to a boil
3. Reduce heat and simmer until chicken is tender (approximately 1 hour)
4. Remove chicken. Shred and discard its shin and bones. Set it aside
5. Strain broth through sieve. Discard solids and return broth to the pot

For the soup:

1. Bring broth to a boil. Then reduce heat and simmer
2. Stir in rice
3. Cover and cook for 10 minutes
4. Stir in shredded chicken, carrots, and celery
5. Cook, covered, until rice is tender and fluffy (another 10 minutes)
6. Stir in lemon juice and dill. Season to taste if needed
7. Boom, it's ready. Serve immediately--refrigerate or freeze what you don't use

I've recently made a large amount of this soup in reaction to the recent COVID-19 outbreak--since I may be housebound for a long stretch of time, this soup can be a long-term ration if there's a point when I start running out of other groceries (or if grocery stores run out of groceries) and need something to tide me over. Of course, it's also a convenient meal on days where I don't feel like cooking. In either case, I made it as a form of prepping.

While shopping for ingredients, I found that most canned goods were sparse, but chicken broth was still available. Meat sections were bare, but i had no problem buying freshly-cooked rotisserie chickens. Produce was still abundant. Spices were still abundant. So long as you can find a whole chicken (or maybe chicken breasts, or strips--check the frozen aisle if need be), you shouldn't have any issues putting this together even in the midst of a pandemic.