The BEST Chicken Noodle Soup

Yes, folks.  I’ve been slacking on my blogging “duties” lately.  I’m just not inspired at all at the moment.  That, or I’m just lazy.  If I want to be honest with myself, it is definitely number 2. (Insert your own scat joke here.)

So to make things easy, I’m going to give you a recipe today.  Last week, I made the most AMAZING chicken noodle soup… quite by accident.  I didn’t know what I was doing.  I had never made chicken noodle soup before until then.

Now, I don’t eat meat at home, unless I’m sick.  I’ve been nursing a cold for about a week now, and didn’t want to eat canned soup swimming in additives and flavorings, so I decided to improvise.  Here’s what I did.

You’ll need:

1 rotisserie chicken (organic)
2 boxes low sodium organic chicken stock
1 package fresh egg noodles
3-4 stalks celery
1/2 package baby carrots
2 onions
2 healthy tablespoons herbs de provence
salt and pepper to taste

[Note: Ingredients are so important to a dish’s success. If you can afford it, buy the best quality foods for your recipes.]

Since I was sick, I didn’t want to make chicken at home. (Too labor intensive.) So I just bought a rotisserie chicken from Dean and DeLuca. (Which turned out to be a major investment… I thought I was getting a deal on it, but let’s just say that I missed a “1” in the price. Oh well, it was a good tasting chicken.)

Ditto for chicken stock. Listen, making stock is the easiest thing to do ever. (Put meat, veggies and herbs into a pot and boil.) But again, I was looking for the easy way out. So I bought boxed low-sodium chicken stock, making sure that it had no additional ingredients outside of organic chicken, water and salt.

So I put out a stock pot, turned up the heat (so sexxxy…) and poured the chicken stock into the sucker. I looked at the rotisserie chicken, shrugged my shoulders, and put the whole thing in the pot. (Making chicken stock in chicken stock sounded good at the time.)  All the vegetables were chopped, sautéed with some butter in a skillet ’til soft, and then added to the pool. I then heaped a few scoops of Herbs de Provence and salt and pepper to the mix. (Be careful on the salt… between the pre-cooked chicken and the stock, there is already enough salt to go around generally. Salt to taste.)

I let the soup-ette cook down for about 30 minutes on low/medium heat. Then I took the whole chicken out, took off the skin, chopped up the meat, and added it back to the mix. On second thought, I decided to put the bones back in too. Chicken soup that actually tastes like chicken??? For shame… I know. It brewed for another 20-30 mins or so.

For the pasta, I bought some cage-free egg noodles from a local farmers market. I boiled it separately until half way done, and in order not to make it soggy and overcooked, I added it to the broth during the last 10 minutes of cooking. These egg noodles were the “eggiest” egg noodles I’ve ever tasted. But I suppose when you make chicken soup… it’s best to add (even) more chicken.  So I brought it on. Again.

So it was done. I removed the bones from the stew and ladled a serving into a large bowl.

Time to eat!!!  Because I’m Indian, I added a healthy squeeze of sriancha for spice. I sat down, and had the most amazing chicken (add more chicken, please) noodle soup I’ve ever eaten.

The most "Chicken-y" Chicken Noodle Soup Ever. Yum!

Enjoy!