Andy Makes Chicken Soup with Sweet Potatoes

[upbeat music]

Is that okay?

I don't know about this haircut.

Not bad.

Take the Saran Wrap up, I want it all natural.

All natural [laughs].

You think this is all natural?

No, it really is.

But I will get Botox one day.

This dish is part of the Feel Good Food Plan.

We did this last year.

Myself, Chris Morocco, the rest of the Healthyish team,

and it was a huge success and you guys loved it,

so we're coming back, round two,

and this is one of the new recipes,

and it's a soup that I've been making for a while now,

and it's just one of those stick to your bones,

really satisfying chicken soups.

Stick to your bones?

It's just like, it's like, it sits in your stomach.

I don't know.

It sticks to your bones.

[Ben] It sticks to your stomach?

I've never heard that before.

[Offscreen Woman] It makes it like--

Stick to your bones.

[Ben] Stick to your bones?

Stick to your bones, yeah.

[Ben] Okay.

Yeah.

[Ben] Okay. Alright. Yeah.

So, you're gonna take a large saucepan,

and you're gonna start with 3/4 pound

boneless, skinless, chicken thighs.

I don't do really anything to this.

Not so sexy but that's okay.

We're gonna add 1/3 cup jasmine rice.

Rinse, rinse to just kinda get the excess starch out.

When you're rinsing it, you should

rinse it until the water runs clear,

and if you don't have jasmine rice

you could use a short grain varietal,

so a sushi rice or whatever you could find.

I'm using two inches of ginger.

It's just peeled.

I'm just going to trim it up a bit.

Thinly slice this.

[knife banging]

Now I thinly slice it because I

want to have pieces of ginger.

I want to taste it and, like, bite into it.

Why are you smiling Ben?

[Ben] Why are you, why-- I'm not gonna say it.

[Ben] Why? What is this? I'm not gonna say it.

No, what is it?

Do I have something? What is it?

[Offscreen Woman] You just sliced that whole ginger

while looking at the ginger.

I'm shocked.

You didn't look up at the camera while you were slicing.

Are you challenging me?

[Ben] Yeah, kind of.

Okay, one, we're going to add this ginger to the pot,

and then I'm going to

slice the remaining half of this ginger

while looking at you, alright?

I'm thinking about what I would do if this knife

accidentally slipped into Ben's body.

Sorry, that's a little gruesome.

You're gonna cut that out?

Okay.

Add the rest of the ginger.

This is going to be really gingery.

It's going to add this kind of zingy, ginger heat to it.

We're gonna take four cloves of garlic.

We're just going to slice these up as well.

You know, just really thin.

[knife clanking]

Originally, I left these garlic whole

when I was developing this soup,

and then I decided I was going to leave them whole

and then take them out and then smash them,

and then I though, you know what,

I'm just going to slice them up

and then add 'em to the soup.

It just makes it even more of a, more garlicky.

So this soup doesn't have a lot of ingredients

but it has a lot of flavor.

And then with this I'm gonna add six cups of water.

[water splashing]

We're gonna place this over medium-high.

You don't necessarily need this to come to a boil

you just, as soon it starts to kind of bubble,

you're just going to reduce it to medium-low.

Let it go for about 12 minutes,

and this is just to, just cook the chicken thighs through.

We're gonna pull them out once they're just cooked through.

Let them cool and then we'll shred them up.

If you see any foam that rises to the top, skim that off.

I'm gonna add a pinch of salt.

We'll adjust the salt at the end,

but I just want to add some salt at the beginning.

So this has been going for about 10 to 12 minutes.

We're just gonna skim this a bit.

There's not too much foam.

It's already super fragrant.

The rice is starting to break, or has broken.

And, we're gonna let this keep going

while I slice up some sweet potatoes.

Two sweet potatoes.

I'm gonna leave them unpeeled.

One, flavor, nutrients, but also that's just going to

allow the sweet potato to stay intact.

Cut into kind of 1/2 inch rounds.

Don't use that.

Okay, so we have our sweet potatoes.

We're going to add this to the pot.

Okay, we're gonna--

[Ben] [laughs] You can see that.

What?

[Ben] What is there to that trick?

Wow.

Okay, we're gonna add these sweet potatoes to the pot

and let them go for about 15 minutes until they soften.

We're gonna give this a stir.

You want the rice to break, like it has,

but you're not going for a kind of congee consistency,

where it's thick and creamy.

This is really just a soup that

happens to have broken rice in it that's really soft

but hasn't thickened the soup that much.

So we're gonna let that cook

until the sweet potatoes are nice and soft,

and then we'll pull out the chicken,

let it cool slightly, shred that up, add it back to the pot.

The chicken is done.

I'm gonna pull that out.

It hasn't been going at a rapid boil

and you can see that the rice is broken slightly

but it hasn't fully dissolved.

The sweet potato is nice and tender.

Garlic, ginger, these are really fragrant right now.

I'm gonna leave this.

You can leave it over really low heat.

These are really hot.

Ideally you would let the chicken cook slightly

but I'm just gonna shred it with two forks,

I mean, this, you could do it with two forks, too.

It's cleaner.

I like doing, like, really fine shreds,

if you want it to be more, um, chunky,

you could leave it into bigger pieces,

but, I don't know, I like the chicken to kind of

be really incorporated into the soup.

This is supposed to be for two people

but you're most likely to have leftovers.

Which, is a good thing.

This soup lasts.

You could definitely make it ahead of time.

So, when the rice is broken, cooked through,

the sweet potatoes are cooked through, super fragrant,

I'm gonna add that shredded chicken back in.

I'm gonna add two tablespoons of soy sauce,

[Offscreen Woman] Oh yes!

Or tamari.

If you don't want to add any soy sauce or tamari

you could just season it with salt.

I'm gonna taste.

Mmm, it's really tasty.

I'm gonna add a little bit more salt.

And then what I love to do is add a lot of lemon juice.

You could add lime juice, but I just like the kind of

tart, brightness that lemon juice can give.

I'm gonna add both halves.

It just kind of brings the soup back to life.

So you end up getting this kind of

lemony, ginger, garlicky soup.

I'm gonna do a bowl of this.

And then I have some cilantro.

I love the stems.

It adds texture.

I know it has a lot of flavor

so I'm gonna give that just a rough chop.

We're gonna just put that on top.

I like some heat.

So, there's no red pepper flakes,

there's no fresh chili or anything like that.

You could add that.

I just love black pepper with this soup

so I'm gonna add a good amount.

There you have it.

This just comes together in about 45 minutes

with only a handful of ingredients.

It's something that is super satisfying.

It's one of my favorite recipes

for the Feel Good Food Plan,

and I hope you guys make it.

[Ben] Hey Chris, Chris.

Want to try this soup?

Yeah, why is Andy hunched over

looking really sad about it though?

Oh, I'm just like--

Like, loud.

I'm just starving.

I know, seriously.

Oh, this soup.

Yeah. Yeah.

It came out really good.

Yeah, alright, cool.

From Feel Good Food Plan.

[Andy] Yep.

Cool.

[Ben] You've already seen it?

Well I'm fired up.

You've already seen it though.

Yeah, absolutely.

Cool, oh, thank you.

[Ben] Chris, I think you got you and Andy

on our website on the same day.

We didn't mean to.

Yeah, I held up a picture of Andy and was like,

make me look like him,

and he held up a picture of me and was like,

make me look like him.

That's sort of just like the plan for now on.

I love this.

I love that it's not congee.

It's like chicken and rice soup--

Yeah.

But, with a little, little something.

Yeah, it's like it does help thicken the soup a bit

but it doesn't take it to that point

where the rice is fully dissolved and creamy and very thick.

Please.

It's so good.

I think like, yeah, the rice adding body

and then like, you have like a rich flavor,

but it gives you a feeling of like satisfaction, you know,

that belies like how clean everything in here is.

Yep.

Beautiful.

Thank you.

Thanks guys.