The Fastest Chicken Noodle Soup Ever

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It still amazes me that you can buy a rotisserie chicken for less than a raw chicken in any super market. With two members of our household sick with colds, I decided the best and most comforting dinner for a sore throat would be chicken noodle soup. I didn't have a lot of time, so a rotisserie chicken from one of our local grocery stores was a good option to speed up dinner prep time. The other ingredients I needed were chicken broth, carrots, celery, noodles, salt and pepper. Ina Garten has a recipe just like mine in one of her Barefoot Contessa cookbooks, the only difference being the addition of fresh parsley in her recipe. I thought fresh parsley sounded like a tasty change from the usual and planned on adding it to my soup. (Although I have to admit that I used twice the amount that Ina uses….) With everything on hand, here's how I proceeded to make a tasty chicken noodle soup almost from scratch in less than an hour.

Ingredients:

6–14-oz. cans low-sodium Swanson's chicken broth

1 cup diced carrots

1 cup sliced celery

2 cups dried wide egg noodles

2 cups diced, cooked chicken meat from rotisserie chicken (keep the rest of the rotisserie chicken for another dish, such as chicken salad)

1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Preparation:

Bring chicken stock to a simmer, add diced carrots, celery, and dried egg noodles and cook for about 10 minutes until the noodles are softened. Add diced chicken and chopped parsley. Add salt and pepper to taste. Heat everything through and serve immediately. Makes about 6-8 servings.

Chicken Noodle Soup

Nothing feels better when you're under the weather than an nice, piping hot bowl of homemade chicken noodle soup. I'm not sure if there is any truth to chicken noodle soup speeding up recovery when suffering from a common cold, but folk wisdom has said for centuries that it does. All I know is that it tastes good and my mom was a master at making a very simple, tasty version entirely from scratch. Here is the recipe–it comes in two steps: the first step describes how to make the chicken stock and cook the chicken, the second step describes how to finish the soup.

Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup (Hühnersuppe)

STEP I

Ingredients for making chicken stock and cooking chicken:

1 4-lb. chicken, rinsed well, innards removed

10 cups water

1-2 stalks celery, cut in large chunks

1-2 carrots, cut in large chunks

1 large onion, cut in large chunks

2 bay leaves

1 tsp. salt

Preparation:

Put the chicken and all other ingredients in an 8-qt. stockpot, fill with water to cover the chicken (approximately 10 cups), and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and let simmer on very low for about 1 1/2 hours.

Remove the chicken and let it cool slightly before deboning. Strain broth and discard all of the vegetables. Return the strained broth to the pot. You now have the clear chicken stock and cooked chicken to make the chicken soup you will actually eat.

STEP II

Ingredients for finishing chicken soup:

all the chicken stock from the first step

2 stalks celery, sliced

2 carrots, sliced or diced

1 tsp. salt (or a little more to taste)

pepper to taste

To the chicken broth add celery, carrots, diced chicken meat, salt and pepper. Bring everything to a boil and simmer on low heat for approximately 20 minutes until the fresh vegetables are tender.

Meanwhile bring a pot of water to a boil and cook egg noodles according to package directions. Serve a scoop of egg noodles with each bowl of chicken soup. Makes about 10-12 generous servings.

Tip: Keep noodles and soup separate, so the noodles don't get soggy but stay al dente. Occasionally, my mom served the soup with rice (buttered rice… she always used butter for cooking…) which is very good, too.

Treats for Kids and Dogs

March 1! Ah, spring is – almost – in the air. I say "almost" because we just had a mother lode of fresh snow a few days ago, so no good-byes to hat hair and heavy boots quite yet. However, there's something about this time of year that makes me want to clear out all the clutter and cobwebs and get the house spring clean. Cleaning clutter is what I had planned for the afternoon, but I'm procrastinating by cooking a few new things in the kitchen. It's just more fun to cook than clean!

Two chicken dishes are on the burner right now: My daughter Emily has asked for a long time when I would make another batch of chicken satay, so she can take some to school for lunch, and I've always wanted to try making all-natural jerky as treats for our dogs, the buddies. So I started marinating chicken strips for a new recipe of chicken satay and started poaching one chicken breast to be cut into small strips and turned into jerky. It is important to precook poultry before drying it into jerky because the temperature of the dehydrator will not go above 155˚F, too low to kill salmonella.

All-natural Chicken Jerky:

Bring water to a boil and add skinless, boneless chicken breast. Simmer the chicken for about 10-15 minutes, depending on the thickness of the chicken breast. Remove chicken from poaching liquid and slice about 1/4-inch thick. Pat chicken slices dry and arrange on a dehydrator tray. Put into a dehydrator at 155˚F for about 4 hours to retain some "give" and chewiness. There are no flavorings whatsoever involved, just the meat, to avoid adding anything that would not be healthy for the dogs to consume.

But now on to the recipe for chicken satay. Usually, when I make this for the kids, I just sprinkle a little paprika on the chicken strips and sauté them in a little olive oil and serve them with a simple peanut sauce for dipping. Today I found a recipe for chicken satay by Tyler Florence on FoodNetwork that sounds a little more sophisticated and "adult," but still seems easy to prepare. Here is my slightly adapted version based on what I had in the fridge:

Chicken Satay:

Marinade:

1 cup low-fat plain yogurt

1 tsp. freshly grated ginger

2-3 cloves garlic, pressed

1 Tbsp. curry powder

1-1 1/2 lbs skinless, boneless chicken breast, sliced

Mix ingredients for the marinade (it will be very thick, actually) and pour over thinly sliced chicken breast, about 1/4 inch thick. Make sure to cover all chicken strips from all sides. Cover and let marinade for about two hours.

Preparation:

Heat a very small amount of oil with a high flash point in a non-stick pan and add the marinated chicken strips. I decided not to skewer the strips, but just sauté them without. This works fine for our family. Sauté strips 3-5 minutes on each side, until the meat is seared and looks lightly browned.

Peanut Dipping Sauce:

Combine:

1/2 cup all-natural peanut butter

2 Tbsp. tamari or shoyu (Japanese-style soy sauce)

1 tsp. red chili sauce

1 Tbsp. brown sugar

juice of 1/2 lemon

2-3 Tbsp. hot water

Mix all ingredients well and serve as dipping sauce for chicken strips. I will serve this dish with rice and cool cucumber salad.

What I learned from this cooking adventure:

1. Next time I make all-natural jerky for the dogs, I will try to slice the meat into thinner and longer pieces, rather than smaller, thicker pieces like today. Thinner pieces might be less of a choking hazard for little dogs. This is, of course, totally unscientific and not researched at all, just my very personal observation from making jerky and watching a large and a small dog consume the treat. Our little dog, Lenny, incidentally received his nickname "Herr Heimlich" after coughing, gagging and hacking when food got stuck in his throat the first time, and we thought we needed to brush up on our skills to perform the Heimlich maneuver.

2. Although my kids liked eating the chicken satay and peanut dipping sauce, both agreed that it made their lockers at school smell "like a skunk" when they opened it at lunch-time. (And I do always pack an icepack in their lunch boxes to keep things cool…)