Homemade chicken soup recipe
Here’s a really easy recipe for hearty, stewlike chicken soup — I’ve been making this a lot lately, because it’s a no-brainer and it makes for fantastic leftovers.
You’ll need:
• One roasted chicken from the deli section of your grocery store
• A couple of those cardboard box containers of chicken broth, or…maybe four or five cans?
• Carrots and celery, chopped into bite-sized pieces
• A package of egg noodles (I like the extra-wide variety)
• Thyme, rosemary, salt, pepper etc
Use your fingers (ooky, but it’s the best way) to pull the meat off the chicken and set it aside. Fill a big pot with your broth — use however much you want, keeping in mind some of the liquid will steam away — and set the chicken bones in the broth. You could include skin, fat etc and sieve that away later, I leave that out so it’s, in theory, more healthy. Simmer this concoction for as long as you like, maybe at least an hour.
Scoop out the bones and bits of chicken-gunk, and add the carrots and celery (I think I use about 4 large carrots and 3 pieces of celery, on average). Add a pinch of thyme and rosemary, and salt and pepper to taste. Let this simmer until the vegetables start getting soft, then add the set-aside chicken meat and egg noodles.
About ten minutes after you add the noodles, it should be ready (check the noodles for softness), but I find that this just tastes better the longer it sits and the flavors mingle.
The whole thing is obviously very flexible and you could add onions, other vegetables, whatever. This soup (which is really more like a stew) served with a pile of oyster crackers fulfills every criteria for being the ultimate comfort food, except possibly for its lack of chocolate. But you could always have that later.
Enjoy!
Posted: February 2nd, 2007 under How-to, Cooking/Food, Personally recommended by Linda.
Comments: 10
Comments
Comment from Patty
Time: February 2, 2007, 12:32 pm
Sounds delish! Just a comment on the ooky thought of digging your fingers into cooked or raw meat. I cannot stand it. I hate the way the smoodge gets under your fingernails and just won’t come out. Then there is also the raw meat disease thing that gives me shivers. Anyhoo, my solution is food grade disposable gloves I buy at Costco. They are great for all things disgusting you must touch in the kitchen. Best of all, you can pick up a pile of chicken gunk and pull the glove inside out over your hand and throw the whole mess away! I’m sure they are sold at other places as well, but Costco had them so I bought them! Two boxes of 100 gloves for about eight bucks. The best!
Comment from honeybecke
Time: February 3, 2007, 12:47 am
I am so making this. Thanks!
Comment from Sally
Time: February 3, 2007, 3:57 pm
I have to agree with Patty - the whole “what on God’s green earth is that under my fingernails” bit is always best avoided.
I too use the gloves from Costco for this and other purposes - one small question though, why do they (and almost everything else) cost at least twice as much here in the UK?
Comment from jonna
Time: February 3, 2007, 7:59 pm
Talk to me about the noodles: do they get mushy after a while? I live in fear of mushnoodles, and Adam is sick as a dawg (and whining like his life depends on it), and this may be on tap for tomorrow.
Comment from sundry
Time: February 3, 2007, 8:32 pm
Comment from Melanie
Time: February 4, 2007, 7:47 pm
Wow, I never think about those cooked chickens. I’m going to have to try that next time I make soup, because I hate having to cook the whole damn chicken myself. And egg noodles rock, why didn’t I think of that either? I must not be thinking at all here.
Comment from amy/southkona
Time: February 17, 2007, 6:50 pm
Just wanted to add that if you don’t want to buy a whole chicken, or if you’re like me and get squeamish about pulling meat off a bird, or if you just want to use chicken you already have in the freezer (we buy individually frozen breasts from Costco) all you have to do is put some chicken in a crockpot in the morning , pour a little chicken broth over it, and cook on low all day (if you start with it frozen you may want to do high for a couple of hours to avoid bacterial danger.) By dinnertime the chicken will shred with a fork and the whole crockpot can just be dumped into the soup. This will actually work for any recipe calling for cooked chicken (I use it for enchiladas all th time)
Comment from Laurel
Time: February 26, 2007, 9:22 pm
Loved this recipe! The February issue of Martha Stewart has a great leftover remedy - http://www.marthastewart.com/page.jhtml?type=content&id=channel5810008&catid=cat256&navLevel=3. It takes a little while to cook but it is so worth it.
Comment from jogawrfffs
Time: July 3, 2007, 12:38 pm
Hello! Good Site! Thanks you! okosaggjsih
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Time: November 4, 2007, 7:29 pm
[…] There are more, but I can’t think of them right now. This time change thing is brutal on an already-messed-up pregnant lady! Either that or I’m slowly slipping into a Fun Size coma. Feeling like it’s 10pm when it’s 9pm, on top of a handful (or 4) of orange (white chocolate) KitKats, on top of a big ol’ bowl of Sundry’s chicken noodle soup, and we’ll be lucky if Ethan’s shouts of “I eat a banana! I watch “Yo Gabba Gabba!” No more sleep, Mommy!” wake me up tomorrow morning. […]
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