Chicken Noodle Soup...
One of our personal favorite soups is chicken noodle soup. I know, I know, everyone knows how to make chicken noodle soup. Come along with me anyways, it will be fun, I promise...
These are the most basic ingredients that every one has in their kitchen. Or at least they are cheap and easy to come by. I usually chop up half of an onion, two carrots, and about 1/2 cup of celery. The noodles in the bag are really good. We have always used egg noodles until we tried these long pasta noodles at Sam's Club. Great find by the way, I am extremely proud of that. That weird looking shape next to the noodles is a bag of frozen chicken stock. The only other ingredients I add is a clove of garlic chopped up and some basic herbs like bay leaf and thyme. And my all time favorite, salt.
Isn't it amazing that a vegetable like celery can look so pretty? Almost like a flower. I love the way cut vegetables look, so satisfying and they are very fragrant too.
After you heat up the 2 or so tablespoons of oil in your dutch oven, add the chopped vegetables until they are slightly brown and translucent. Adding a little salt to them at this time is always good.
See how they onions are slightly caramelized? Ahh, they look grand... While I was cooking the veggies I was also defrosting the broth in the microwave. Now I am going to add the broth and wait for all of the chunks of ice to melt. I also defrosted the other bag of broth that has the cooked chicken in it and chopped it up into small pieces. Once that has boiled up to a nice level of moderate heat, I am going to throw in about half of the bag of noodles.
See, isn't it fun to make soup? Pouring things into bubbling broth is so fun. Some people are really fond of making their own noodles, which is fine, but these are really good.
That looks like a good amount of noodles, don't you think? Now these great little noodly things are going to cook for about 24 minutes or as desired. If you like them softer it may take a little longer. About 4 minutes before the noodles are done, I like to add the chopped up chicken which is already cooked so that it just warms up, but doesn't cook more. Justin really prefers it that way.
Doesn't this look like a nice hearty meal on a cold winter's day? We ate almost all of it for lunch today. Rebecca had at least three bowls full. Mmm, mmm good...
Brendan liked it too. He couldn't wait for everyone else to show up at the table. He is such a nice boy...
