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Mom’s Best: Nourishing Chicken Noodle Soup

April 20, 2023 by sdurbin Leave a Comment

If you’ve come for quick, savory, hearty chicken noodle soup to solve your cozy or sick day woes, you’ve come to the right place! 

chicken noodle soup ingredients

Why You’ll Love This Soup

Herbs, we’ve loaded them. Basil, thyme, oregano, and black pepper for the savory taste you know and love.

Veggies, we’ve hid them well. A celery, carrot and onion mirepoix cooked tenderly so that they melt in your mouth. 

Chicken with actual flavor? You betcha! Our trick is to pan sear or bake your chicken before hand smothered in spices. This adds more flavor from the cooked juices, and an additional round of spices. Have extra? Shred and freeze!

Broth: cooked with purpose and time to be gut healthy and gelatinous. I’ve long simmered my chicken carcass (from above!) all day, and used Lisa’s instapot chicken broth recipe for great results. Bonus tip: purchase food grade storage containers to store quarts of broth in your freezer!

Chicken Noodle Ingredients

Why is my broth gelatinous?

Your bone broth may look a little like jello after a long simmer. This means your broth has broken down the collagen in the connective tissue of the meat. When it cools, the proteins reconnect and form the texture you are witnessing. (1)

Do fresh or dried herbs work best?

As long as your dried herbs have slight color still, fresh and dried both work great. You will have to use twice as much dried herbs as fresh.

chicken noodle soup ingredients

How to make Chicken Noodle Soup

Start with the broth. This can be made way in advance. Anytime you cook a full chicken, use the carcass to make 8-10 cups of bone broth on your stovetop or in your Instapot. I will even freeze old carcass when I don’t have the time (or freezer space) to make broth. Since I’m not very experienced with canning, I freeze a quart at a time in food grade storage containers once it has cooled. 

In fact, the scraps from all the veggies you chop today can be added to your broth, or freezer stash! A mirepoix is that magic combination of carrot, celery and onion and we add a few garlic cloves for bonus points. Garlic is anti-inflammatory and antibacterial – and when it’s cold season, we are all for fighting bacteria and inflammation. Chop them coarsely, if you like each flavor, or finely if you want to melt these veggies into tender morsels.

These veggies will simmer in olive oil or butter for a good five minutes. The onions will become translucent, the carrots soft and the garlic fragrant. I find that it is pertinent to add the herbs now. These too, chop finely, and enjoy the aromatics that follow. 

Meanwhile, take chicken and cover in an assortment of herbs, garlic powder, pepper and salt. You have options here: bake in the oven at 400 F until cooked, or slice finely and pan sear. Once the chicken has some color, shred or chop finer and toss into the pot. At the time, you can add the broth as well. We’d like for the lot to simmer for at least 30 mins, but you’ve made good broth and tasty chicken so now would be fine to ladle out too. 

Chicken Noodle Soup Recipe

toddler chopping veggies for chicken noodle soup

Ingredients

2 TB of olive oil

4 medium carrots

1 medium onion

2 sticks of celery

4-6 cloves of garlic

½ tsp of ground black pepper

1 tsp of garlic powder

1 tsp of fresh thyme

1 tsp of fresh oregano

1 tsp of fresh basil, minced

1 cup of shredded, cooked chicken

1-2 quarts of chicken broth

Directions

  1. Cover chicken in assorted spices of your choosing, and cook. This can be done in the oven at 400F or sliced thinly in a cast iron pan. 
  2. Chop carrots, onion, celery thinly and mince garlic. In a pot, combine veggies in the olive oil and simmer at least 5 minutes with spices (black pepper, garlic powder, thyme, oregano, basil). 
  3. Once veggies are softened, add the shredded chicken and pour in chicken broth. 
  4. Simmer pot for at least 30 minutes. Serve, and enjoy.

Soup & Story

Now that our tummies are full of simmered broth and tender veggies, I vote the toddlers do the laundry and I take a nap. If the soup was for an at home sick day, we recommend you check out some other nourishing options for kicking that cold! Having littles home and sick makes rest difficult, so take them along for a story and soup for a quiet afternoon.

More FWS Recipes:

Mom’s Supportive Elderberry Syrup

Strawberry Rhubarb Jam Bars

Garlic Scape Pesto

Mr. Putter and Tabby book with chicken noodle soup

Sources:

  1. The Nourished Kitchen

Filed Under: Kitchen Corner, Recipes Tagged With: chicken noodle, health, rain day, recipe, sick day, simple recipe, soup, toddler friendly

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Thanks for stopping in! I’m Shannon, a second time mom on the move between the garden and the kitchen with toddler & baby in tow. Here, we believe that there’s always something to celebrate, a mess to be made and something to learn along the way – and what comes from your “wooden spoons” is always best. Stick around for seasonal and homemade things to try! To read more, click here.

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