I don’t know about you, but whenever I start to feel the tiniest bit sick, I always want my Mom’s homemade chicken soup. The broth itself is just a nutritious-fest with all those bone broth minerals, but the warmth of the soup going down and the bites of fresh chicken… It’s just something that can’t be beat. When I was sick last week, Mom made chicken soup and Kevin would bring me some home every night on his way home from work. Since luckily I like it healthy or sick, and Kevin seems to be having traces of my cold, I decided to finally learn to make it myself.
When I cook, I like to make things as simple as possible. This has a lot of steps and a long cooking time (need hours to pull out as many nutrients from the bones into the broth as possible), but if you coordinate your schedule around it, it’s really not as bad as it seems! Sooo, without further adieu, first things first.
How to pick your ingredients: Chicken soup can really be the garbage disposal of all soups! And I mean that in the absolute delicious and best way possible! You can put anything you want in it and it will taste awesome. I don’t think I’ve had the same chicken soup twice because it’s always something new!! This time though, I decided to go for a very standard chicken noodle soup so my veggies were simple… Just carrots and celery (forgot the leeks). And what about something carby? In my head there are three options available for this part, but none are meant to be mixed: noodles, rice or potatoes. I love them all! (Next time I think I’m going to go for sweet potatoes!) But I decided to go with noodles! Chicken noodle… Duh!
1. Start the broth and cook the chicken. In a pot of water, bring your chicken, half an onion, a couple carrot, a couple stalks of celery and a few cloves of garlic to a simmer. Let simmer for one hour.
*I wanted a whole chicken for my soup so I included this step. If, however, you have left over chicken and bones, then you can easily start at step #2!
2. Remove the chicken and continue simmering the broth with the bones. I couldn’t hang around the house for 5 hours, so since I didn’t want to burn the place down, I transferred my broth and veggies over to my crockpot. Remove the chicken and let cool for a few minutes. Pick the chicken off the bone. Put the chicken in the fridge and place the carcass back in the broth. Keep on high for about 4 or 5 hours.
*If you just start with your carcass and have left over meat already cooked, then you can start on this step. I only started my chicken in the pot because my whole chicken and all my ingredients wouldn’t originally fit in the crockpot. Once the chicken was off the bone, it all fit!
3. Strain the broth and add the final soup ingredients! The broth is done! All those amazing-for-you minerals from the chicken bones and the flavors and the nutrients from those veggies are soaked up into one amazing broth. Add the shredded chicken, chopped up vegetables, and any other ingredients and allow to cook for an hour. I chopped my vegetables up earlier to make super smooth and quick so I could jump on the couch.
*Since I didn’t want the noddles to get soggy (obviously I’m planing on reheating this soup so many times!), I made the noodles separately and added them to my hot bowl of soup right before serving.
I was planning on just using my stash of noodles in my pantry, but of course I only had angel hair pasta and elbows… I’m pretty sure Kevin thought I was crazy! So day two: I went to Whole Foods special for him and I bought him some bowties!
How do you like your chicken soup? What kind of ingredients would you be sure to include in your soup?!
Luvv, Leigh B
I’m going to add this to my list, because there really isn’t anything much better than homemade chicken soup!
