Chicken Noodle Soup

This recipe is easily becoming my favorite winter staple when I don’t know what to make for dinner. It comes, however, with a disclaimer that this one is meant to be a guideline, as I don’t actually use a recipe when I make this soup. As always, recipe at the top.

Ingredients

Chicken or veggie stock (4-6 cups)
2-4 chicken breasts or thighs
2 carrots
1 small onion (or 1/2 a large one)
2 celery stalks
3 cloves garlic
pasta (whatever shape you desire–I like spirals)
salt, pepper, bay leaf
olive oil

Recipe

1. Pat your chicken dry and season with salt and pepper. Pour some olive oil in a dutch oven or a stock pot. Once the oil is hot, brown your chicken. Don’t worry about cooking it all the way through right now–it’ll cook fully in the soup, you’re just browning it for the ~flavor~ Remove the chicken and set it aside on a plate.
2. In the same pot, dump in your onions and cook until they’re softened. Add in the carrots and celery. Cook all of this until it’s soft. Salt and pepper to taste and add in your garlic.
3. Once your veggies are nice and soft and smell so yummy, add in your stock. Honestly, I use whatever stock I happen to have (I once made this soup with a miso broth base and it was amazing). If you don’t have enough stock, just supplement with water.
4. Add your chicken back into the pot with the veggies and stock. Cook for 5-10 minutes or until water begins to boil. Throw that bay leaf in.
5. Add you pasta to the party. (If you hadn’t noticed, we’re doing a one pot soup–no need to pre-cook your pasta here). Boil for however long the package says. Mine usually take a tad bit longer since you’re not really keeping the soup at a rolling boil.
6. TASTE YOUR BROTH. If you’ve used salted boxed broth you probably don’t need to add salt, but you will definitely want pepper. If you used a low sodium or no salt added base you’ll want to add both.
7. Serve into bowls, top with fresh cracked pepper and enjoy!

To be quite honest, I didn’t even realize I had a mental recipe for this soup until I sat down to write it out. What I really love about this basic outline is that you can sub in so many things if you don’t have everything in the fridge. I’ve subbed in green bell peppers for celery when that’s what I had and low and behold, it still worked.

This soup is truly the EASIEST. I hate cooking my pasta separately for soups so I just…don’t. I tend to use the entire box of noodles in this recipe as well, which might be overkill but I like it so we’re going to roll with that.

Do you have a recipe that you love to make? One that you don’t need to look at any cookbook for since you make it so often?

xoxo,
J