Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

Is there anything more comforting than homemade chicken noodle soup? Perfect for cold weather, and especially good if you are fighting off a cold or flu. There are probably as many ways of making chicken noodle soup as there are moms who make it.

The key is the stock, homemade from bones. The iron rich gelatin from the bones is good for you, and one of the reasons why homemade chicken stock is so beneficial.

If you don’t already have a cache of homemade chicken stock, the following is a recipe for making the entire soup from scratch, starting with a whole chicken, parted out. This recipe makes an especially clean tasting soup with a rich, clear broth, and plenty of noodles.

A few points about the method. First, we separate the meat we plan on using in the finished soup from the bones and meat we will use for the stock. The last thing we want to do is dry out the chicken meat we plan on eating by cooking it for a couple hours.
Second, we parboil the stock meat and bones, at high rolling boil, for 3 minutes, then discard the boiling water. This hard boil forces the scum to the surface all in one go. This is a technique I use for making stock from chicken feet, and helps produce a clear, clean broth.
Finally, I chop up the raw chicken breast and thigh meat and return it to the soup near the end of cooking, to be lightly poached in the soup broth. You could also cook these pieces whole, in the broth, and remove them after 15 minutes of cooking or so, cool them and shred them to be added at service. My friend Jaden cooks the chicken this way in her Vietnamese chicken noodle soup.
That’s it, hope you like it, eat and be well!

Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup Recipe

While this recipe shows the step for entirely homemade chicken soup, you could also easily make this chicken noodle soup starting with already prepared stock and some raw chicken. Use about 3 quarts of chicken stock, and 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts and 2 chicken thighs and proceed to step 6. Making soup this way will take about 30 minutes.

Ingredients

• One 3 1/2-pound chicken, cut into parts—breast, thighs, backs, wings and neck (if available)


• 5 carrots (2 carrots scrubbed clean, but not peeled, cut into 2 inch chunks for the stock, 3 carrots peeled and cut into 1/4-inch rounds for the soup)


• 5 ribs of celery (2 ribs cut into 2 inch pieces for the stock, 3 ribs cut into 1/4-inch thick slices for the soup), including celery tops for the stock


• 1 onion, quartered (for stock, peel on is okay)


• 3 cloves of garlic, peel on, cut in half


• 2 to 3 sprigs of fresh thyme (or a teaspoon of dried)


• 1 bunch of parsley


• 5 whole peppercorns


• Salt


• 8 to 12 ounces of  egg noodles (depending on how noodle-y you want your soup)


• Freshly ground black pepper

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