Chicken and Barley Slow Cooker Soup

This weekend was a snowy and cold one for us! We got close to 15cm of snow along with -25 with wind chill temperatures. Oh, the life in Alberta! Because of that, I tried to stay at home and much as possible, so most of my Sunday was spent catching up on chores and making some delicious soup to get us through the week. I've been craving some hearty chicken soup for the last few months plus I had a bag of barley lying around, so my recipe decision was an easy one!

Here are all the things you need:

- Carrots

- Celery

- Onion (I love LOTS of onion)

- Uncooked chicken breasts

- Left over/frozen chicken and veggie scraps to make the broth.

- Thyme

- Salt

- Pepper

- Barley

Directions:

1) First things first, I make a chicken and veggie broth in the crock pot. In order to do that, I fill the crock pot to it's max limit, and add frozen chicken bones and frozen veggie scraps. Whenever we have a pre-cooked chicken I always save the bones and scrapes and put them in the freezer to future broth making. Same with veggies, I always keep the ends and scrapes that you would normally throw away in the freezer along with the chicken.

2) Let the chicken and veggie scraps simmer in the crockpot for 3-4 hours on low. One that is done, you can strain the water to get the bones and veggies out of the broth. You then will have your delicious broth base for your soup!

3) Once the broth is strained, cut up your chicken breasts into small cubes and throw it in as well as all of your veggies and barley. 

4) Set your slow cooker on low for about 6 hours and the wait is on! I usually like to set all of this up late at night and let it cook until I get up in the morning. (Shows you how little sleep I get) haha

5) Once it is ready, let it cool and start filling up medium sized mason jars. I can usually get 5 or 6 mason jars out of one slow cooker recipe.

As you will notice, I don't have any measurements in my ingredients list. To be honest, I'm the worst cook ever when it comes to that. But the good thing about slow cooker soup is you can usually get away without measuring anything. I mean, you can always use extra veggies right?!

Enjoy my friends!