Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

There is nothing more comforting than snuggling up with a warm bowl of soup on a cold rainy fall day.  Oh sure, anyone can pop the top off a can of soup, nuke it for a few minutes and you are good to go.  But... what if I told you, a big, yummy pot of homemade soup was not only extra delicious, but not really that hard to make?  After I got my Big Blue Mama a few years back I decided it was time to try making my own chicken noodle soup from scratch.  I know, I know, it sounds like a slippery slope.  Make your own soup and soon after you might be doing other pioneery things like fishing in the creek, threshing wheat by hand, and hanging the wash out on the line... But seriously, take a few simple ingredients and some left over rotisserie chicken, and an hour or so later you will have a hearty home cooked meal.

We have tried a couple of recipes over the last year, and most of them claim you can have them ready in thirty minutes.  The veggies (in my opinion) are still a little tough this way.  I give them a little extra time to simmer, soak up some flavor, and get kid friendly and tender. 

Homemade chicken soup is the bomb diggity!

Okay, now onto the ingredients.  You will need (full printable recipe at the end):

1/2 to 1 full stick of butter
2-3 carrots chopped up small
2-3 celery stalks chopped up small
1 onion chopped fine
4 cloves of minced garlic
2 cups of chopped left over rotisserie chicken
8-12 cups of chicken stock
8-12 oz of dried pasta
2 bay leaves
1-2 teaspoons parsley
1/2 teaspoon thyme
salt and pepper to taste

Take the stick of butter and throw it into your pot.  Turn heat on to slightly above medium.

If you freak out about butter then just use half a stick.  If you believe in Paula Dean chuck the whole thing in

Next, chop up your carrots, celery and onions on the small side.  You want to make these small so they can get tender faster.  Toss them into your melting butter.

The French call these three veggies Mirepoix (pronounced "mira-qua") Throw it in to everyday conversation to sound smarter!

Simmer these veggies lightly in the butter for five minutes, until they cook down a bit.

After 5 minutes, add the 4 cloves of minced garlic and stir.  You can also add the parsley, thyme, 2 bay leaves, and a bit of salt and pepper to taste.  Simmer for another 10-15 minutes.

You can not eat bay leaves, we will fish them out at the end.  But they do add great flavor!

After about 10-15 minutes you can now add the chicken stock.  You can make your own or you can use a box of stock.  I used Rachel Ray's chicken soup stock.  There are 4 cups in each box.  I used two boxes for 8 cups total.

I always keep a third box on hand, just in case the noodles expand too much. A little extra stock can help bring the soup back to a balanced broth/noodle consistency.  If you do not have enough homemade stock, you can do half yours and half Rachel's, like I did here.  You want to bring the temperature back up to a boil (my big blue mama took about 20 minutes at least to heat all the way back up).  We are going to cook the noodles in the boiling soup.

By this time, your veggies are getting a little softer, so you can add in your chopped up rotisserie chicken.  I usually take the meat off the bird while it is still warm after dinner the night before, and store in a container until I want to use the extra meat.  I make a little assembly line from storage container, to plate. I chop the meat up into bite sized pieces, and a second plate for skin or other undesirables.

I usually do this the same time I chop up the veggies, before I start cooking

While the soup is coming up to a boil, you can add in your chicken pieces

Stir gently and wait for the soup to come back up to a boil.  You do not want a super hard boil here, more like a strong simmer to cook the noodles in.  Pour in your dry noodles

We use bow tie pasta because we have girls.  We call this princes bow soup.  They love it!

Next, let the soup cook the noodles.  The amount of noodles really depends on you. Currently we are more of a 70% noodle to 30% broth kind of family right now.  If you like more broth, add less noodles.  I tend to get over zealous anyway and pour too many in.  After they expand, most of my stock will seem to disappear.  If (when) this happens, that's when I pull out my reserve 4 cups of chicken stock to add to the pot.  There is no such thing as too much chicken soup.  It freezes well and makes great left overs for the week.

Isn't the princess bow tie pasta adorable?

Oh yes one important step you don't want to miss.  Please fish out the bay leaves at this time.

They have done their duty adding mountains of flavor.  Discard at will.

We have made this soup a few times, and found the smaller sized pasta (as shown above) seems to work a little better.  Here is the same soup with full sized bow ties:

If you love glorious pasta then try it with the larger bow ties!

You actually have to "cut" the noodles with your spoon while you are eating your soup.  This action reminds me of wonton soup.  After your pasta is soft, add more chicken stock if you need it, then check your spice levels.  Add a bit more dried or fresh parsley, salt and pepper if it needs it.  This whole process should take around an hour.  You can put the soup on low if need be and it can sit for an extra 1/2 hour and it won't be much worse for wear.  The larger noodles will get a bit more floppy, but those small mini bow ties hold up pretty good.

This was our big noodle soup, with less broth

Here is our small princess bow tie soup

The absolute best thing to serve with homemade soup is some toasted artisan bread or a buttery, crusty loaf of french bread.  This recipe is a pretty simple version of the soup.  You can add your own herbs and spices and make it to your family's tastes.  Also, like I said before, if you have leftovers they make great lunches the next day, or save in the fridge all week and have some when you get the craving.  Soup will indeed freeze (I thought the noodles would be destroyed), but it thawed and reheated just fine.  So go out there, impressed yourself and  your loved ones with a big bowl of homemade soup... and stay warm and cozy this month.

Full Printable recipe found here

Big Blue Mama

I just realized I've been a little remiss in introducing one of my most favored, most loved, and one of the newest kitchen gadgets in my cooking arsenal.  I guess you haven't been formally introduced yet, but I'd like to take the time to introduce you to someone whom I affectionately call "Big Blue Mama".  

"Hello, " says Big Blue Mama, "nice you meet you."

Isn't she a beauty?  I bought her about 6 months ago as a nod to my increasing love of the Pioneer Woman's cookbook and she has quickly turned into my go-to pot for many a recipe.  This particular pot here is a Lodge 7.5 quart dutch oven in Caribbean blue, and I took the advice of many Amazon reviewers and opted to also buy the stainless steel Le Creuset replacement knob, because she originally came with a plastic knob that was rumored not to stand up to high oven temperatures.  Le Creuset, by the way, is the much fancier, Frencher, (MUCH more expensive), version of this same pot, sold in the $240 range. (Not to mention use of a fancy French pot requires you to use a long cigarette holder, look down your nose a lot, and mumble "oh la la" and oui" as you simmer your soups).  My Big Blue Mama here on the other hand is still a high quality kitchen tool, and an excellent investment at a much more reasonable price of $73.  Sometimes you can find a great sale and get one in the $50 range.

First of all, she is HEAVY.  You definitely need two hands to do any lifting.  Matter of fact, she's heavy with nothing in her.  This can be handy though, if you need some extra upper body strength training.  Unlike Rapunzel and her deadly fry-pans, I'm not sure how this could dissuade any home intruders, attackers or palace soldiers, well unless you dropped it directly on their toes...  The inside of her is white sealed ceramic, which has a nice smooth surface for even heat distribution, and incidentally also makes clean up a breeze.  Clean up, by the way is hand washing with warm soapy water. 

Plus, these little babies are VERSATILE.  Anything you can do in a crock pot you can do in a dutch oven.  Anything on the stove top and almost anything cooked inside the stove can be prepared in a dutch oven.  They cook soups and stews beautifully, big hunks of meat for roasts, whole chickens, hot oil for frying, desserts, you name it, Big Blue Mama can handle it.  I've heard you can even do casseroles, bacon, biscuits, pizzas, artisan crusty loaves of bread, pies and cakes.  Low and slow is the best route with these bad boys and my food has been turning out wonderful so far.  Since I'm planning on using her a lot in the near future with my new soups and recipes, I just thought I should give her a proper introduction.  Next, I might even write her a catchy theme song.

Corn & Cheese Chowder - Testing a Pioneer Woman recipe

So I must admit I'm a big fan of Ree Drummond, aka "The Pioneer Woman".  I have her cookbook and am having tons of fun trying a lot of her recipes.  I've been watching her show on the Food Network as well and trying some of those new recipes on the show not yet in a cookbook.  Last night I thought I'd try one that looked pretty good on her show, a corn and cheese chowder.  Here is a picture of what is suppose to look like, from her blog:

Ree's lovely soup with bread bowls

Here is also a link to her website with the play by play recipe, if you want to make it, which you should:  
Corn and Cheese Chowder by the Pioneer Woman 

I am just trying these for my family to see how we like them, make a few small changes, and see how it turns out.  The most fun I had with this recipe was chopping up all the bell peppers.  It was so colorful I had to take a picture

I'm a pepper, your a pepper, she's a pepper, he's a pepper, wouldn't you like to chop a pepper too?

So I chopped them all up real purdy like and though the recipe didn't call for it, I added a few cloves of garlic using my handy dandy garlic zoom, mostly because I couldn't resist using the cute thing!  Then I dumped each thing into the pot one at a time, sauteing in butter a few minutes each just like she recommends.

Pretty peppers in the pot

After the peppers, butter, onions, and garlic, the next thing I added was the bacon, then flour, seasoning, the chicken stock, the milk, etc.  One thing I changed was the amount.  We have three little girls, so technically I'd be cooking for 5, however they eat like birds most of the time and tend to frown on my cooking experiments as  actual "edible" food, so in reality this is just for hubby n me.  So instead of doing 3 cups of stock, I did 2, and instead of 2 cups of half/half I did 1 cup. I did add the whole amount of cheese though, because really, you can never have too much cheese, no?

So I let it simmer on low and get all nice, thick and bubbly.  Didn't have bread bowls on hand but had a crusty loaf of french bread that went nicely with it.  Hubby seemed to really like this soup.  I thought it had a nice warming effect.  The peppers were very mild and added just a hint of heat.  The kids on the other hand, wanted NOTHING to do with it.  This is despite the fact they love corn and cheese in any amounts.  I do think the bell peppers gave this soup a more "grown up" taste, hence the shunning. 

We should probably put this into the grown up soup arsenal around here.  This is the 4th soup I've made from scratch in the last few weeks, and I'm really starting to get the hang of how easy and tasty homemade soup can be.