Chicken Soup

I am putting this up at Marc's request.  He no longer is able to reliably find good chicken soup, as good as Grandma made it!  So now he needs the recipe.  I will add some suggestions at the end of what to throw into the soup to make it more than broth with some vegetables.  A hint: if you're going to add some sort of starch like rice, quinoa or noodles, you can make them separately and let them cool.  When you add them to the nuclear hot soup, it cools it down nicely.

Chicken Soup

1/2 tbsp butter
2 ribs celery
2 large carrots
2 parsnips (or one really large one)
1 medium onion
1 quart chicken broth (I like the Pacific organic low sodium)
1-2 cups diced chicken breast
1/2 to 1 tsp salt (optional)

Prepare the vegetables in whatever size you prefer.  You can slice, leave the celery largely intact as spears, or do like I do and mince them all up in the food processor so they're unrecognizable and you don't notice you're eating any nasty chunks of celery.  Melt the butter in your stockpot, then saute the vegetables until tender in the butter. Add broth, chicken and salt and simmer for 20 minutes.

Optional:

I like to use rotisserie chicken (the whole thing) to make this up.  If you use the rotisserie chicken, you won't need the butter.  I strip the meat off the chicken and chop it, then add to the soup.

You can get a Napa cabbage, rinse thoroughly and shake dry, then slice into shreds and thrown them in the soup to simmer.  The cabbage doesn't change the flavor, but it adds texture and bulk and makes the soup more substantial..

Alternatively, you can add rice, matzo balls, noodles, quinoa, etc. at the end.

What makes this soup so awesome is the Grandma Elaine innovation of putting parsnips in it. Thanks, Elaine!