Slow Cooker Creamy Chicken & Wild Rice Soup

I'm from MN and I've been living in Las Vegas for exactly two months today. Back home at Panera I could easily get chicken & wild rice soup-at the Paneras out here, that's not one of the soups. So I've been craving it. I have a couple bags of real wild rice that I've been wanting to play around with but I've never really made anything with it before. I found this recipe on Pinterest and it had a mixture of long grain rice and wild rice so I thought I'd try it out and if I liked it, I would find a soup that didn't have the long grain rice but only the wild rice. I did like this soup but I wasn't sure I liked the leftovers. It was really thick after sitting in the fridge so I had to add about 1/2 to 1 cup of chicken broth to water it down so I could eat it. If I made this again, I wouldn't add as much flour in the roux and hopefully it won't make the soup as thick. I made two substitutions in this recipe-it calls for Rice-a-Roni long grain & wild rice but I used Uncle Ben's. And I also used gluten-free all-purpose flour. The soup was good and it tasted similar to the Panera one so I'll probably make this again.

Slow Cooker Creamy Chicken & Wild Rice Soup:

4 1/2 c chicken broth
2 c water
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 pkg Rice-a-Roni long grain and wild rice
1/2 tsp salt, plus more to taste
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 c all-purpose flour
1/2 c butter
2 c half-and-half
1 c grated carrots
1 c diced celery

Combine broth, water, carrots, celery, chicken and rice (along with seasoning packet) in large slow cooker. Cook on low 6 hours or on high 4 hours. Take chicken out and shred with two forks and then add them back into the slow cooker.

In small bowl combine salt, pepper and flour. In med saucepan over med heat, melt butter. Stir in flour mixture by tbsp to form a roux. Whisk in cream, a little at a time, until fully incorporated and smooth. Stir cream mixture into slow cooker and then let cook on low 15 more minutes. Enjoy!




The roux...






Enjoy!...