Anyway, it’s another food tutorial! Today I’m going to share my recipes for Ginger Chicken Noodle Soup and Irish Cream Brownies. You can multitask making these two recipes so you don’t have to make one thing at a time back to back. When I know I’m going to have to make a lot of things, I prepare all of my ingredients first – all of them measured and using whatever preparations needed before I begin. In this way, my flow of cooking is more smooth and efficient.
We’re going to start with the ingredients for the Ginger Chicken Noodle Soup:
- 1 tablespoon butter or margarine- 1 tablespoon minced garlic
- 1 tablespoon minced ginger
- ½ cup diced onion
- ½ cup celery
- ½ cup diced carrots
- ½ teaspoon ground black pepper
- 8 cups homemade or store-bought chicken stock (I used Swanson Broth with less sodium)
- 1 tablespoon of fresh parsley (I used dried parsley since I already had that available)
- about 4 cups of chopped cooked or un-cooked chicken meat (I like chicken breast best!)
- about 8 ounces of dried egg noodles, or you can get creative and use your favorite noodles! (Here I used Rozoni’s Healthy Harvest Rotini.)
First, in a medium soup pot, melt your butter/margarine. **If you haven’t cooked your chicken yet, cook your uncooked chicken with your garlic, ginger, ground pepper and onion until the onions have softened and the garlic has lightly browned – this’ll intensify your flavors. After that, add your carrots and celery; sauté for about 2 minutes. As you can see, I just added the ingredients I mentioned into the pot already since I was crunching on time that day.
Then, add your chicken stock to the mix and blend in your parsley; let it come to a low simmer. **If you had your chicken already cooked prior to this, go ahead and add this to your mix. Turn the heat to a steady simmer and let the ingredients cook for about 20 minutes – this will tenderize your chicken meat and your veggies as well as bringing the flavors together.
Now while that’s going, we’re going to get started on the Irish Cream Brownies! This was a recipe that I recently found and wanted to try out since it is fast and easy to make, so here’s the recipe to that:
- 1 cup all-purpose flour- ½ cup unsweetened cocoa
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ cup butter or margarine
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
- 1 cup sugar (that's what's in that mushroom jar, lol!)
- ½ cup egg substitute such as Egg Beaters
-1/4 cup Irish cream – I used Saint Brendan’s Irish Cream liqueur
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-Some cooking spray
Prep your oven to 350 degrees F. While it’s warming up, prepare in a medium bowl your flour, unsweetened cocoa, baking soda and salt – mix them together with a whisk. Don’t forget to also prep a 9-inch square baking pan (or a pan of similar size, like what I did...) by spraying a light layer of cooking spray.
In a large microwave-safe bowl, microwave the chocolate chips and butter/margarine and blend until the chocolate chips are completely melted. Add the sugar, Irish cream and vanilla to the concoction and mix until the sugar is completely melted (you may need to microwave it for a few seconds until it’s warm enough to do so). Now, the original recipe said to also add the egg substitute, but when I did so, I may have made it too warm. You can try this yourself if you’d like, or you can wait until later to blend it in.
While your brownies are baking, your soup is ready for the noodles; you can use egg noodles or be fun and add your favorite noodles. Don’t add too much (like I accidentally did) or your soup will end up thick and starchy. Best to serve this while it’s hot! The soup will be a bit spicy – that’s because the ginger is doing its work!
And here’s a tip about brownies: For a more fudgy texture, take the brownies out of the oven when your toothpick comes out slightly wet, but not too dry (otherwise you’ll have extremely dry brownies!).
Unfortunately, the brownies did not turn out the way I wanted them to and I think it’s because the egg that I added before ended up getting too warm and didn’t give the fluffy, fudgy texture for the overall product. =( The flavor came out nicely though – you can really taste the Irish cream in it too. Try this recipe for yourself, and let me know how this turned out for you in the comments section below. In the meanwhile, I’m working to see how I can improve this recipe in the future. Also, the soup ended up a little too starchy since I accidentally went a bit overboard with the noodles (because I love them sooooo much!); it ended up being just as delicious… I just gotta be careful for the next time around!
Again, I was crunching for time, and I didn't realize that I didn't take as many pictures as I hoped... But I'm very sure you all got the idea. I hope you guys enjoyed this tutorial and hope you guys will have fun making this as much as I did; again, if you have any comments regarding your results or curious about any improvements on my end, let me know in the comments section!
Happy fooding!
~Reiko ☆*.
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