Comfort Food, Pt. III: Chicken Noodle Soup

Back in February, I was sick with a cold.  As I lay on my couch (pretty much because that’s all I had the energy to do), I wished I had some chicken noodle soup.  Of course, in that state I wasn’t about to make any from scratch, so I had to wait until I was better to do so.  I also wanted to make the noodles from scratch too, so I had to wait until I had an afternoon free.  This time finally came a couple of weeks ago (yes, I know; I’ve got a backlog of posts), after I had completed a major project and needed some down time.  So, I turned on the Netflix (Weeds, Season 5) and set to work.

I had a whole broiler/fryer chicken (3-4 lb.) so I boiled it in my Dutch oven according to the recipe below.  As it was boiling, I made the noodles and set them to dry.  Then, once the chicken was cooked, I pulled it out and took the skin and bones off, and pulled it into small pieces.  Then, in another stock pot, I put in a container of Root’s seasoned chicken broth (I highly recommend the local company for any of their products; they specialize in chicken and related items.  An excellent place for quality chicken if you’re in or near the Fremont, OH area).  Just one container wasn’t quite enough for the stock the recipe called for (I needed about two of their containers, diluted 1/2), so I added in again the stock made by boiling the chicken.  Then, I continued with the recipe and finished it soon after.

At the end step, noodles boiling in the soup, just ready to serve

Egg Noodles (Betty Crocker Cookbook, New Edition, 2005)

2 cups all-purpose or whole wheat flour

1 tsp salt

3 egg yolks

1 whole egg

1/3 to ½ cup water

Rolling out the dough--see my new rolling pin? It's from Williams-Sonoma

Noodles drying on the counter

Chicken Noodle Soup (BHG New Cook Book, 2006)

1 whole chicken

8 cups water

1 onion

2 tsp salt

¼ tsp pepper

1 bay leaf

1 cup carrot

2 stalks celery

1 ½ cups egg noodles

2 Tb. Fresh parsley

Simmer 1^st 6 ingredients about 1 ½ hours or until fully cooked.  Remove chicken from broth, remove bones and skin, cut into bite size pcs, remove bay.  Skim fat.  Boil broth, add carrot and celery, add noodles, add chicken and parsley.

I have no idea what made this recipe take so long.  It doesn’t seem like it should take very long, just reading it.  But, somehow, it ended up taking about 4-5 hours!  I was very hungry when I finally sat down to supper at 9pm that night.  I’m sure it wouldn’t take nearly as long next time, since I wouldn’t be reading the recipe so much.  Also, I’d plan to make the noodles the night before.  Even though it said the noodles would be dry in 30 minutes, that’s not true.  Of course I also probably rolled them a bit thicker, but still.  I left them out overnight.  (I also froze the rest, as it seemed to make twice as much as necessary.  We’ll see how those frozen uncooked ones fare when I remember to take them out and use them again.)

The taste of this soup was…well, a bit flat.  It needed more salt, or a stronger chicken flavor, or something.  The egg noodles were good, though next time I’d roll them thinner because they don’t have a lot of flavor just biting into them.  Also, I’m not sure if I should have let the soup cook down more, even though the recipe didn’t say  to do that.  In any case, next time I’ll be sure to make some changes.  It was good overall, though not good enough to serve to company.

Somehow I was able to hold off my hunger (It's after 9pm now, you realize) to snap this photo. It looks a bit watery in this picture, too. Note the Jello salad in the upper left corner 🙂