What I Made for Dinner :: Slow Cooker Asian Chicken Soup

I love chicken soup; it's definitely comfort food for me and I've been making it a lot since moving to Maryland because it's been so cold this winter. Ever since I had my husband's grandmother's matzo ball soup 20 years ago, I've always added matzo balls to my chicken soup, even if I'm making chicken noodle soup. But, as with all of my Standards, I decided we needed a little variety.

I found this Asian-style slow cooker chicken soup recipe and it reminded me of Seolleongtang, my favorite Korean soup. It's made from beef bones and is rich and almost creamy from cooking the bones for so long. I've often had it with rice in it, and I like to season it liberally with salt & pepper and sesame oil.

The recipe I used is similar but you use chicken. It calls for chicken breast, but I used chicken legs, hoping the bones would add some flavor to the soup. I made the mistake of putting the slow cooker on Low for the first part of the recipe, but I cranked it up to High when I added the liquid, and I let it cook for an extra hour. I'm assuming, with the bone, the chicken takes longer to cook through.

I didn't salt the soup at all while preparing it, but I did add a bit of soy sauce. It wasn't enough, though, because the addition of the nappa [see below] probably diluted the soup just a bit. We all salted the soup fairly heavily at the table, and also used white pepper for an additional kick.

As for the additional ingredients:

• I conveniently had some leftover white rice in the fridge that was getting a bit stale so it was perfect to add to the soup.
• I only added half of the chicken back in. (I'm saving the other half to make chicken salad for my daughter's lunch.) 
• I parboiled frozen Trader Joe's cilantro chicken wontons before adding them to the soup. I made the mistake of adding the wontons to the slow cooker half an hour before serving; the wonton skins kinda disintegrated. 
• And I wanted to have more vegetables so I added shredded nappa cabbage half an hour before serving. For my own personal tastes, that wasn't long enough. I prefer the nappa cooked a bit longer.