Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

I've been slacking on the blogging, but now that I've finally finished all of the released books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series (nerd alert), I don't have much of an excuse to keep slacking. Except I just went and started Downton Abbey, and now I'm done for.

Moving onward... this is a very basic chicken noodle soup recipe. If you don't want to make homemade noodles, you can use as many egg noodles as you want for the soup.  There's also a lot of room to add other stuff that you might like to put in a soup.  

The whole chicken I used for the stock was a "soup chicken" from the farmer's market. Soup chickens are older and no longer laying eggs. I found the soup chicken to be really tough, so it didn't yield much in the way of extra chicken meat for the soup. I may have needed to cook it longer.  I'll use a regular roasting chicken or whatnot next time.

Makes about 8 servings.

Chicken Noodle Soup
Adapted from: Epicurious

Ingredients

1 pound chicken parts (I used thighs/legs)
2 stalks celery, cut into 3 inch pieces
1 whole chicken (about 3 pounds), rinsed
1 large whole onion, unpeeled
4 large carrots, peeled
1 medium whole parsnip, peeled
2 leeks, white and light green parts only
Homemade noodles, or egg noodles
2 bay leaves
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 bunch dill, tied together

1.  Pour 14 cups of water into a large stockpot.  Add chicken parts and celery and bring to a boil.  Meanwhile, rub the inside of the whole chicken with salt.

2. Add the whole chicken to the pot and, if need be, add extra water so that the whole chicken is entirely submerged in water.  Cover pot, reduce heat, and simmer for 30 minutes.  Test the chicken with a fork to make sure that it's fully cooked. When it is, remove from pot and set aside. Leave chicken pieces in pot.

3.  Add carrots, onion, turnip, leeks, bay leaves, salt, and pepper. Let soup simmer for 1 hour and 15 minutes.  Use a mesh strainer to skim the surface of the soup and remove any bits of goop that have floated to the top of the soup.    

4. When the chicken cools, remove skin and shred meat into bite-sized pieces. Add the chicken to the soup (or you can make it into chicken salad, but the soup is better with more chicken).

5. Strain the soup and discard anything solid except for the carrots and the chicken pieces.  Shred chicken pieces into the soup. 

6. Two minutes before serving, add dill to the soup and then remove. Add salt and pepper to taste and slice carrots into the soup.  Add noodles to each bowl of soup before serving. 


The stuff. Chicken legs/thighs from Raghoo Farms in Fort Plain, NY, and soup chicken from Arcadian Pastures in Sloansville, NY.  Good stuff.