Soups On

Well clearly, I was not able to share all of my recipes with you before Thanksgiving.  Today I am going to share my Chicken Noodle Soup recipe.  Well, it is actually my mother's recipe (which I assume means that it was my grandma's recipe).  My mom had about 5 recipes that were killer growing up.  This was one of them.  I do not have a written recipe that I follow, so I apologize for that.  I will just give you the gist of things and hopefully yours turns out delicious.  It is kind of fool proof, and it gets even better on day 2 and 3 and 4 and ...

I start by cleaning and chopping up a bunch of carrots.  I don't like to use baby carrots because they are too small and babyish for this soup.

Some celery.  Including the leafs which have the most flavor.

And a couple sweet yellow onions which I leave in large chunks.

Then I throw everything into a HUGE pot with some evoo and s&p.  I think I am going to have to stick with the Rachael Ray vernacular which includes evoo for extra virgin olive oil and s&p for salt and pepper.  It is easier to write.  

I let the veggies cook up a bit and then I add in some chicken bouillon and a bit of water to keep it from burning.  I tried this new stuff and did not like it.  It is absolutely not "better than bouillon."  It just didn't add enough flavor to the soup.  I had to add in some other stuff on day #2 (sorry no pics of it, but it was just some normal non-cubed, semi-solid bouillon (cubed is also fine)).

I rinsed off my bird and then added that into the pot with some more s&p.

Next I filled up the pot with water and last but not least threw in a couple bay leafs.

I let the soup come up to a boil and simmer for a couple of hours.  The longer it simmers, the more flavor the chicken will impart in the soup.  The longer it simmers, the more difficult it will be to remove the chicken from the soup.  It completely falls apart.  No matter what.  Be prepared for that.  You have to fish for all the pieces.

I pull my chicken out and place it in a bowl.  Then I use two forks to pull the meat off the bones and add it back into the soup.  I do not use much dark meat, mostly just the breast meat.  You should use whatever you like.  I also like to leave it in big chunks so that it does not shred too much in the soup, but it is totally up to you.

Then I let the soup cook for a while longer.  Pretty much the longer it cooks, the more flavorful it will be.  Unless you use crappy bouillon and then it doesn't matter.

I like to use egg noodles for this soup.  Either wide or extra wide.  These were dumplings and I think that they were too think.

Throw it all in a bowl and you are set!

I should mention that I make so much soup so that I can freeze it.  I put it in quart containers and that way I can have chicken noodle soup anytime I want.  I really need a bigger freezer.  And a bigger kitchen.

So Long!