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Our cool evenings are coming to an end so I’m trying to squeeze in as many cold-night dinners as I can. A family favorite is this chicken noodle soup — with dumplings! It may seem like overkill to have both noodles and dumplings, but it’s delicious. You can easily leave out one or the other if you like.

This is very versatile as well. You can easily substitute the raw chicken for cooked leftovers (roast chicken works perfectly).

Or you can make the soup in the crockpot, and do the dumplings separately on the stove: Pour about an inch of chicken broth into a shallow pan and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to simmer, and drop your dumplings in, and cover. Let cook for a few minutes and then serve with the chicken soup out of the crockpot.

I have made dumplings in the crockpot, but it took forever. Doing it separately on the stove is much faster.

Chicken Noodle Soup with Dumplings

1 lb chicken, cut into 1/2 to 1 inch cubes
1 Tb oil
2 Tb butter
1 potato, peeled and diced into small pieces
2 carrots, peeled and diced into small pieces
1 onion, chopped
1 bay leaf
1 tsp poultry seasoning
2 Tb flour
6 cups chicken broth

2 cups egg noodles
1 cup frozen peas

2 cups biscuit mix
1 tsp salt
1 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp dried parsley

Add oil and butter to large pot over medium heat. Add potatoes, carrots, onion and bay leaf and cook for five minutes, stirring often. Season with salt and pepper, and add poultry seasoning. Add flour and cook for two minutes, and then stir in broth and bring to a boil. Add chicken and stir, cooking for about five minutes. Add egg noodles and stir.

Combine biscuit mix with salt, garlic powder and parsley, and add about 1 cup of warm water (you don’t want it too wet or too dry, so you may need to adjust with a little more mix or a little more water). Using two large tablespoons, scoop out a spoonful and drop gently into the pot. I usually get about six dumplings. Cover the pot and reduce heat to simmer, steaming the dumplings for about 10 minutes. Remove the lid, remove the pan from the heat and add the peas.

I would usually serve soup with a yummy homemade bread, but there are enough carbs in this soup on its own!

We’re finally heading into fall in the desert southwest with temperatures that look to be staying under 90 degrees for the rest of the year. This means it’s time to whip out the soup recipes!

One of my favorites is baked potato soup. It gets extra brownie points because I can put it all in the crockpot in the early afternoon and have everything ready by dinner time.

The original recipe that I found didn’t specify that you’re supposed to mash up the potatoes, and while I do like chunks of potato in the finished soup, I don’t like the whole thing to be nothing but. It’s easy enough to do by using a regular potato masher right in the crockpot after the potatoes have cooked for several hours, and preferably right before you add in the dairy ingredients.

If you’re vegetarian, you can easily omit the bacon and use vegetable broth instead of chicken.

Baked Potato Soup

6 slices bacon, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 onion, finely chopped
4 (10.5 ounce) cans chicken broth
2 chicken bouillon cubes
5 large potatoes, diced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 cups half-and-half cream
1 (12 fluid ounce) can evaporated milk

Cook bacon in a skillet until evenly brown. Remove from skillet and place on paper towels to drain. When fully cooled, cover and refrigerate the bacon. Drain all but a tablespoon or so of the bacon grease from the skillet and place chopped onions in to cook until soft.

Transfer onions to a slow cooker, and stir in chicken broth, bouillon cubes, potatoes, salt, and pepper. Cover, and cook on low for 6 to 7 hours, stirring occasionally.

Using a potato masher, mash the cooked potatoes in the slow cooker until desired consistency is reached (you can also use an immersion blender, or transfer some of the potatoes and broth to a blender for a smoother texture, and put back into the crockpot when done).

In a bowl, whisk together the flour and half-and-half. Stir into the soup along with the evaporated milk. Add cooked bacon. Cover, and cook another 30 minutes before serving. Serve with shredded cheddar cheese and chopped chives.

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The poor kids — I’m on a soup kick lately. Well, a soup/stew/chili kick, anyway. Our fall here is so brief that I take advantage of it any way I can, and that includes dinners that take hours to cook and fill up the house with yummy smells. Thankfully, everyone humors me because they know that it also means a lot of baking, too — bread, cookies, you name it.

Anyway, Mike asked me a couple of weeks ago if I’d find a split pea soup recipe, and here it is. We had it last night with a nice homemade loaf of bread (and freshly baked chocolate chip cookies for dessert. See how that works out?).

Peas don’t need to soak like beans do, so after you’ve sorted and rinsed them they can go directly into the crock pot. Also, make sure you add everything into the crock pot in the order given, and don’t mix it up when you’re done. It’s important that the peas stay submerged for as long as possible to soften up.

Once it’s done I transfer about 3/4 of it (minus the ham, if I can help it) into a blender to puree, and then add back into the crockpot for another half hour or so. You don’t need to do this but we like it on the creamier side. An immersion blender would work perfectly for this, but I can’t find mine.

You can also make it vegetarian by omitting the ham and using vegetable stock. If you don’t add ham, up the broth to four cups and use only 1 cup of water.

Split Pea Soup

1 lb dry split peas, rinsed and sorted
1-1/2 cups cooked ham, cubed (or 1 ham hock)
1 cup chopped onion
1/4 tsp pepper
2 cups chicken broth
3 cups water

After cooking:
salt to taste
1 cup heavy cream

Layer ingredients into the crock pot in the order given above. Do not mix. Cook on low for 6-8 hours or high for 4-6 hours.
About half an hour before you’re ready to eat, add the salt as needed and heavy cream.