Chicken Stew

I’ve been wanting to try my hand at food photography for a while now.  I’ve tried it before, getting my camera out with the intent to take pictures of every step of the cooking or baking process.  But since I have 3 little monkeys who want to “help” cook, I usually can the idea of taking pictures and instead just try to get the meal done without burning my kitchen down or some other major disaster.

Lately I’ve been itching to pick up my camera.  I’m having major photography withdrawal since it’s been too cold to take my kiddos outside for picture taking fun.  Seriously, I moved away from the super cold weather 14 years ago, or so I thought, for the past few weeks it’s been bitterly cold here.  So today, I asked my husband if some warm soup sounded like a good dinner idea.  I love eating soup when it’s cold out.  We decided on Giada De Laurentis’ Chicken Stew

and biscuits.  I’ll tell you, it hit the spot!  Since my husband was home to help entertain the little people, I actually got to take some food pictures.  I know I need to practice much more to make my food pictures look as yummy as they do on those glorious food blogs, but I still had fun picking up my camera again.

On a side note, I got many strange looks from my husband and kids while I took pictures of my food.  My daughter was like, “Why are you taking pictures of raw chicken?”

 

So I started with onions, celery, and carrots, as all soups should start, then sauteed them in olive oil

Then I got my other ingredients out to add after my veggies were soft

Once my veggies were nice and shiny, I added everything except the beans

Then I brought the soup to a boil and turned down to simmer until the chicken was cooked

When the chicken was cooked through, I removed it from the pan, discarded the skin and bones, and added the shredded chicken and beans back to the pan and simmered for 10 minutes longer.

Here is the final product.  I would love this with crusty bread, but everyone else wanted biscuits.