Chicken Potpie Soup

Marlene Weber died on January fourteenth, 2021, at six-fifteen in the morning, in the Grinnell house, in the bedroom she shared with Roger for forty-eight years. She was sixty-nine. The January darkness was complete. Iowa in January is the hardest place, the coldest place, the place that demands the most of anyone who stays, and Marlene stayed as long as the staying was possible and then she stopped, and the stopping was quiet, the quietest thing in a house that has been getting quieter for months.

I was there. I'd driven up Monday night because something told me to — farmer's instinct, I call it, the instinct that tells you to harvest before the storm, to check the field before dawn, to go where you're needed before you're called. I held her hand. Roger held her other hand. The three of us in the dark bedroom, the quilt on the bed, the furnace running, the January wind outside doing what January wind does, which is making the walls flex and the windows rattle and the world feel temporary in the way that all things in Iowa feel temporary — the seasons, the crops, the people, all of it passing through, all of it planted and grown and harvested and gone.

She died between one breath and the next. The space between. The pause that doesn't end. I held her hand and the hand was the hand that taught me to roll pie crust and fill canning jars and frost cinnamon rolls, the hand that held the wooden spoon and the piping bag and the tea cup, the hand that was steady for sixty-nine years and shook at the end and stopped shaking when it stopped, and the stopping was the thing I'd been watching for and dreading and the dread was nothing compared to the reality, because the reality is that my mother's hand is still and my mother's hand will always be still now and the world that contained her moving hands is a different world than the one I'm standing in.

Roger said nothing. He sat. He held her hand. He didn't let go for an hour. I let him have the hour. I went to the kitchen. I made tater tot hotdish. It was Thursday. Thursday is tater tot hotdish. My mother just died and it's Thursday and Thursday is tater tot hotdish and the schedule doesn't change because the schedule is the structure and the structure is the thing that holds you up when the grief is trying to knock you down. Ground beef, cream of mushroom soup, tater tots, 375, forty-five minutes. The recipe is the recipe. The recipe carries the teacher even when the teacher is gone.

I’ve made tater tot hotdish more times than I can count since that Thursday, and I’ll keep making it every Thursday as long as I’m standing. But when people ask me what to cook when the world has gone quiet in a way that scares them, I tell them to make this soup — Chicken Potpie Soup — because it carries the same logic my mother lived by: warm things in a pot, feed the people in front of you, let the recipe do the work your hands can’t. It’s the kind of food that doesn’t ask anything of you except that you show up, and some days, showing up is everything.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 35 minutes | Total Time: 50 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 medium yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 medium carrots, peeled and sliced into coins
3 stalks celery, sliced
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
2 cups whole milk
1 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 3/4-inch pieces
1 1/2 cups frozen peas
1 cup frozen corn
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary
1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
Biscuits or oyster crackers, for serving

Instructions

Sauté the vegetables. Melt butter in a large Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat. Add onion, carrots, and celery and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 7 minutes. Add the garlic and cook 1 minute more.
Build the base. Sprinkle the flour over the vegetables and stir to coat evenly. Cook for 1–2 minutes, letting the flour absorb into the butter and vegetables, until it smells slightly nutty.
Add the liquid. Slowly pour in the chicken broth while stirring constantly to prevent lumps. Add the milk, thyme, rosemary, salt, and pepper. Stir to combine.
Cook the chicken. Add the chicken pieces to the pot. Bring the soup to a gentle simmer over medium heat and cook, stirring occasionally, until the chicken is cooked through and the broth has thickened slightly, about 15–18 minutes.
Add the peas and corn. Stir in the frozen peas and corn. Simmer for an additional 3–5 minutes until heated through. Taste and adjust salt and pepper as needed.
Serve. Ladle into bowls and serve with warm biscuits or oyster crackers on top or alongside.

Nutrition (per serving)

Chicken Potpie Soup — The Recipe That Holds You When Nothing Else Can