Sunday, November 6, 2011

Chicken Soup

My poor husband is sick. It started with the baby's runny nose and while she seems to be feeling ok (minus the nose), my husband picked it up and he's just sick.

So today I made chicken soup. From scratch. And I am kinda proud of it because it was so damn good.




My soup!


I used this recipe as the starting point and kind of made it up as I went along, but it was so good that I wanted to write it down so I had it for next time I needed some soup. It actually cooked up pretty quick, though it would probably also be good to simmer all day on the stove. It makes the house smell delicious :-)


Chicken Soup Ingredients:



  • a whole (raw) chicken... I think I got a roaster chicken

  • a bunch of carrots

  • a bag of celery stalks

  • whole onion

  • spices - I used salt, pepper, rosemary, oregano, thyme, and chicken boullion cubes

  • egg noodles

Recipe:



  • Put the chicken in a big soup pot and cover with water. I added 3 carrots and 2 stalks of celery, chopped in really big pieces. You'll end up tossing these, so the bigger, the better. I also added half of the onion, cut into 2 quarters. Bring the water to a boil and keep it boiling until the chicken starts falling off the bone.


  • Skim the foam off the top of the water every so often. I have no idea how long I let the chicken boil; maybe an hour? But the chicken will totally start falling off the bone - you'll know.

  • Meanwhile, clean and chop the rest of the carrots, onion, and celery. Set aside.


  • Once the chicken is done, put another big soup pot in the sink and put a strainer over the second pot. Drain the chicken/veggies/broth into the strainer. You can then put the second pot on the stove. That's the broth. You can toss the cooked veggies (they will probably be really smooshy) and cut the chicken however you like it. I did a combo of shredded and cubed.


  • Toss the raw veggies and chicken into the broth on the stove and let it simmer. Add your spices - I used 3 chicken boullion cubes, salt, pepper, rosemary, thyme, and oregano.


  • Bring water to a boil in the first pot and cook the egg noodles per package directions.


  • When the noodles are done, add to the chicken soup. Stir it up and it's done!



I think it took 2.5 hours to make, but I wasn't really paying attention to the chicken and I didn't have the forethought to cook the noodles and have them cooked and waiting to be tossed in. You shoudn't cook the noodles in the soup because they'll get really soggy; I bet if I cooked them along side the chicken I could have shaved 30 minutes off the total cook time.


This makes a huge pot, so we have lots of leftovers. Yum :-)

1 comment:

Claire said...

Dang that looks good. Soup is my favorite!