Rachel's A+ #1 magical chicken paprikash soup

3 chicken breasts or 24 oz of breast tenders (you can use thighs if you like a darker/oilier meat. I like to use breast because you will be essentially be poaching the chicken in broth, so it will fall apart whatever you do.)
2 sweet yellow onions
1 can of roasted diced tomatoes
1 stick of butter
64 oz of chicken stock
4 tablespoons smoked paprika
chili powder to taste (I like Chili 9000 by Penzey's)
a few pinches of kosher salt
4-8 tablespoons sweet paprika
4 tablespoons minced garlic
2 tablespoons shallot powder
48 oz of sour cream (I use full fat Breakstone. If you use low fat or fat free, my ancestors will weep and my Grandma's ghost will shank you with a butter knife.)
dumplings or spaetzle (I use Sophie's Choice dumplings or make my own with this recipe: http://www.food.com/recipe/swiss-spaetzle-very-easy-homemade-noodle-441475.)

Slice your onions and chicken and brown them (fry them on medium-low for about 25 mins) in a stick of butter in a skillet. Add your smoked paprika, kosher salt, and minced garlic mid-fry.

In a large crock pot or stock pot, mix chicken stock with kosher salt, shallot powder, chili powder (to taste- I just do a tablespoon or so) and sweet paprika. The more paprika you add, the more orange and more spicy the soup will be. The soup pictured is about a 4 on a spicy scale of 1-10. Add the can of tomatoes, browned chicken & onions and all the melted seasoned butter from the frying pan. Simmer on low for anywhere from 1-4 hours. The longer you simmer, the more tender the chicken will be and the more oomph your spices will have. At this point, you can also use an immersion blender if you want the chicken and onions to be very finely minced, but I like a chunkier soup.

When simmerfest is over, add your sour cream and spaetzle and simmer for another 15 minutes so the spaetzle gets tender. Sometimes I like to fry my spaetzle in a little bit of garlic butter before I put it in the soup. If you do that, just fry on medium until they are very light brown. You don't want to fry too long, because they'll get tough. If your soup is too thick for your liking, add chicken broth, cream, or milk (don't do soy, rice or almond, it will taste weird) to thin. Though if you think the soup is too thick, I don't know if we can be friends. Yields 12-16 bowls of soup! FREEZES BEAUTIFULLY!