Few dishes offer as much comfort as a bowl of homemade chicken noodle soup. It's ideal for cold weather and particularly helpful when you're battling a cold or flu. Every home cook likely has their own variation on this classic.
The secret lies in preparing your own stock using chicken pieces or an entire bird. The gelatin derived from chicken bones and cartilage is packed with iron and contributes to the health benefits of homemade stock.
For those without a stash of homemade broth, this recipe walks you through creating the soup entirely from scratch, beginning with a whole chicken that you cut into parts. If you already have stock on hand, there's also a 30-minute shortcut method included.
The result is a particularly pure-flavored soup with a rich, translucent broth and an abundance of noodles.
Preparing Chicken Noodle Soup from Scratch with a Whole Bird
When you have a few hours to spare, crafting the soup from scratch is well worth the effort. You'll require a whole chicken (divided into pieces), water, celery, onions, carrots, seasonings, and egg noodles.
The process has two main stages: first, prepare the stock; then, strain away the bones and assemble the soup.
Start by making the stock:
Many recipes call for simmering the chicken meat intended for the soup along with the bones for the entire duration, which results in dry, overcooked meat.
To prevent the chicken from becoming tough and dry, we first remove the breast and thigh meat from the bones that will go into the final soup. We prepare the stock and add the chicken meat later in the cooking process. Alternatively, you can cook those pieces whole in the broth, take them out after roughly 15 minutes, let them cool, shred them, and add them when serving.
For the stock, we begin by parboiling the meat and bones in a vigorous rolling boil for three minutes, then pour off the water. This intense boil brings all the impurities to the surface at once—a traditional method that yields a clear, clean-flavored broth. (The nutritional benefits from the chicken are retained during the subsequent long simmer.)
Next, we put the parboiled meat and bones back into the pot, toss in celery, carrots, onions, garlic, and herbs, cover with water, and let it simmer for one and a half hours to develop the stock.
Now assemble the soup:
Once the stock is finished, strain out the solids and introduce fresh vegetables into the broth. The vegetables used during stock-making have lost most of their nutrients after an hour of simmering, so fresh ones are necessary.
When the soup and vegetables are simmering, dice the raw chicken breast and thigh meat that we set aside earlier and add it back to the pot. Then stir in the dry noodles. The soup is ready once the noodles and chicken are fully cooked.
The 30-Minute Shortcut: Quick Chicken Noodle Soup
If you have pre-made chicken stock (homemade is still the best choice), you can put together this soup in 30 minutes or less—simply start at step 6. Put chopped carrots and celery into the stock and bring it to a simmer. Next, add diced chicken breast or thighs and return to a simmer. Then toss in the dry noodles. Once the noodles are tender, season with parsley, salt, pepper, and thyme, and it's ready to serve.
