DIY Cream of Chicken Soup Mix

Who doesn’t love a good casserole?  They are great comfort food and can be an easy way to feed a crowd, often for not a lot of money.  The problem I have with them, though, is that they often contain “cream of something” soup, which isn’t the healthiest.  If you look at the label, you’ll see a list of ingredients that sounds more like a science experiment.  I mean, what the heck is disodium guanylate?  Should we really be consuming that?

When possible, I try to find another way to get that creamy texture a cream soup gives to a dish, like in my updated version of chowmein casserole.  But sometimes, you just can’t find a good substitution, like in this yummy chicken spaghetti casserole.  So I do occasionally use cream soups, but I’m not happy about it.

So I was really excited when I found this cream of chicken soup mix at Chickens in the Road.  It has basic ingredients in it and one batch makes enough for 18 cans of cream of chicken soup.  I made a couple of slight changes to the recipe, the most significant being that I omitted the chicken bouillon.  My other issue with cream soups is that their sodium content is so high and I felt that the chicken bouillon wouldn’t help that issue.  So I left it out and instead of reconstituting the mix with water, I use low sodium chicken stock, to get that chicken flavor.  You can use store bought for this or, if you have it on hand, homemade is even better.

Now you can make all of your favorite, yummy casseroles and feel good about it!

DIY Cream of Chicken Soup Mix

• 4 cups non-fat dry milk
• 1 1/2 cups corn starch
• 1 tbsp onion powder
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 1 tsp dried basil
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 1/2 tsp salt

Add all ingredients to a mixing bowl.  Stir until well combined, this will take a couple of minutes.

Store in a tightly covered container. You now have enough mix to make 18 cans of cream soup.

To reconstitute, whisk together 1/3 cup of the mix and 1 1/4 cup low sodium chicken stock in a sauce pan.

Bring mixture to a bubble over medium heat, stirring frequently.  Continue to cook until mixture thickens.

This will yield the equivalent of 1 (10 oz) can cream soup.

ENJOY!