Nishime or Asian chicken soup crockpot whole30

I love nishime but traditionally it is made with tofu and with a lot of soy sauce. Since whole30 doesn't allow these things, I omitted them but added a lot of the other items that I love. So extra chicken and extra daikon!

Kombu is used to make the base of the soup (as well as some home made chicken stock). Kombu is seaweed that is eaten a lot on Japanese food. My mom made her dashi (stock) with bonito as well - but I'm too lazy for that.

Here is a group of all the ingredients:

Dried shitake mushrooms, kombu, bamboo shoots, daikon (the white root) and canned mushrooms as well. Also added is the fresh organic chicken (two pounds) and the chicken stock as well as the flavorings (red boat fish sauce and coconut aminos).

1. Firs put the kombu and the dried mushrooms in a bowl of luke warm water. It will instantly get slimy. Thats normal. Do not discard the water. This is a flavor bomb that's going right into the crockpot!

2. While the dried stuff is become hydrated, cut the chicken into chunks and quickly fry them. I do this for all my meat before going into the crockpot. It seems to help the meat stay together vs get too soft and disintegrate into the soup.

3. Cut up the dikon into eatable pieces. I like big pieces. You can also add carrots to the soup but I find they really sweeten it. And since the coconut aminos are sweet as well, I omitted them.

4. The seaweed should be workable by now. Cut the large rectangles into strips. If you plan to eat them (like I do) then tie them up into knots. It makes it easier to grab from the soup. This actually makes a lot of seaweed, so you will not eat them all. Don't feel obligated to tie all the seaweed.

5. Dump it all into the crockpot including the water the seaweed and mushrooms hydrated in. Then add the chicken stock (3 cups-ish). About three table spoons of coconut amino and fish sauce. A good amount of salt and pepper and then let it go for 8 hours on low.

6. I add kelp noodles (two bags) from whole foods two hours before I'm going to serve the soup. For leftovers, I throw spinach into the bowl and nuke it. So good! This made a huge amount of soup. I calculated it to about 200 calories a serving but don't get me wrong, I eat two servings of this sometimes (especially when I was on whole30). I know it's bad to open the crockpot, but you're going to have to taste this soup a lot. I added aminos, fish sauce and more salt and pepper at various stages. If you are doing this non-whole30, reduce the amount of daikon and chicken. Add a block of tofu and use soy sauce and sugar vs aminos. 

Right out of the crockpot!

Leftovers with spinach. So good!