Tricia's Week 12 Recipe: Crockpot Chicken Wild Rice Soup

Back in undergrad, a friend made chicken wild rice soup from a recipe at allrecipes.com.  He altered his a bit - most of that altering I don't remember except adding ham, and showed me where to find the recipe.  I went home that evening, printed the recipe...and never made the soup.  Sad, yes?  Thankfully I have rectified that oversight with my week 12 recipe, Chicken Wild Rice Soup.  I looked and looked, and managed to find the original recipe I had printed on 6/28/2003 at this link.

If you remember my Week 11 White Chicken Chili, you will recall I bought two rotisserie chickens and used only the breast meat from those to make the chili - thus reserving the rest of the two birds for my Week 12 recipe.  I found that I had on hand most of what I needed, including 'wild rice of dubious origin', (ziploc baggie full, came w/ me to the house, think Rachel and I bought it together and split it but do not recall -but it is rice and doesn't go bad if stored properly)...

Ingredients for my version:
1/2 cup butter
4 stalks celery, chopped
4 medium/largish carrots, chopped
1/2 container sliced fresh mushrooms
1.5 teaspoons granulated onion (recipe calls for a finely chopped small onion, but real onion is banned after a friday night adventure involving onion-mushroom omlets and salad w/ the salsa from week 10...but that is a different story)
3/4 cup flour
6 cups chicken broth
2 cups cooked wild rice (I like wild rice, a lot.  I also read this wrong originally...I saw two cups wild rice, cooked.  BIG difference, that!  So, I used 3.5 ish cups wild rice and still have some left over to make a week 13 recipe)
remainder of two rotisserie chickens (or one lb cubed chicken breasts, cooked if you prefer)
1/2 lb deli pit (or any deli ham you like as long as it's not processed) ham, cubed (if you ask nicely, you can have them take the pit ham and slice you a slice between a quarter and half inch thick - this is about 0.5 lbs and saves the trouble of buying a ham and having lots left.  However, if you have leftover ham, throw it in.  This is not in the original recipe but the friend from college did this)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon curry powder
1/2 teaspoon ground mustard
1/2 teaspoon dried parsley
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 cup slivered almonds
1 tablespoon sweet vermouth and 2 tablespoons extra dry vermouth (the receipe calls for sherry which I did not have but some searching on the web mentioned that vermouth could be used.  It didn't say sweet or dry and since I had both, I mixed them!)
2 cubs half and half

Directions
1.  Add wild rice and water to rice cooker, or cook rice to make 2 cups cooked wild rice - keep warm. (As I LOVE wild rice, we went with 3.5 cups cooked wild rice.)  If you are like me and add two cups uncooked rice + water, you have the pleasure of having leftover wild rice with which to brainstorm the next week's new recipe!  
2. Melt butter in large sauce pan (make sure said pan can handle most of the ingredients above, especially 6 cups broth) stir in celery and carrots and saute for 5ish minutes.  Add mushrooms and saute for 2 more minutes (add granulated onion at this time).  Add flour and stir well.  Gradually pour in 6 cups chicken broth stirring constantly, until all is added.  Bring just to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer
3.  Add chicken, ham, salt, curry powder, ground mustard, parsley, ground black pepper, almonds and vermouth, and heat through, pour this into crock pot.
4.  Add wild rice to crockpot and stir.
5.  Add half and half to crock pot slowly, stirring the whole time.  Let simmer 1-2 hours.  Note: Do not boil or your roux will break!

I will be making this again, it was delicious!  I still have quite a bit in the crock pot.  Funny side story - I learned today the lesson of the Pillsbury Breadsticks and the Pressure Burst:  If one decides to enjoy Pillsbury Garlic Breadsticks with one's soup, please open the breadsticks fresh from the fridge and prepare onto your cookie sheet.  If, like me, you set them atop the oven (which is preheating) then your doorbell rings and you go talk to your visitor and then go downstairs for a few minutes to discuss the visitor...the pressure builds in the can of breadsticks as it warms.  This leads to the laws of physics in action, and the breadsticks launching themselves across the kitchen with an audible *POP* which is heard downstairs and scares your birds!  Luckily, most of the dough stayed on the oven (launching point), the other dough was safe in the can (at landing point) - allowing for the breadsticks to still be eaten, even if they looked slightly mangled.