What’s in Chicken Noodle Soup?
It doesn’t take many ingredients or complicated ingredients to make homemade chicken noodle soup. You only need chicken, a few basic veggies, herbs, and spices to make chicken noodle soup. Here are the ingredients you’ll need:
- Vegetables: I make a straightforward mirepoix with celery, carrot, and onion, and I add a little garlic for flavor. This vegetable medley simmers with the chicken to produce a delicious homemade soup broth. The vegetables give the soup a ton of color and texture as well.
- Bone-in Chicken: The best chicken noodle soup is made with bone-in chicken, which is essential. I use bone-in, skinless chicken breasts, so there are tasty bits of white meat all over my soup. Feel free to use drumsticks or thighs if you prefer dark meat. Although you can leave the skin on while the soup simmers and remove it later if you want an extra-rich soup, I prefer to remove the skin to cut down on excess fat.
- Herbs and Spices: The traditional warm flavor of this soup is derived from a blend of basil, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, and pepper. Naturally, we also add salt to enhance the natural flavors even more!
- Water: To make an incredibly delicious homemade broth, simmer the chicken, veggies, and seasoning in water.
- Noodles: You can use pretty much any type of pasta shape for this recipe; some suggestions are stars, alphabet pasta, fideo, or ditalini. I personally like to use wide egg noodles for this soup because of its airy texture.
Can I Use Rotisserie Chicken?
You can use shredded rotisserie chicken instead of raw chicken in this homemade chicken noodle soup recipe if you want to cut corners. Before starting to make the soup, remove the chicken meat from the bones. Then, add the leftover carcass to the soup pot and simmer it with the vegetables rather than the entire chicken breast. Before reserving the shredded chicken at the end, remove the bones.
Alternatively, you can use a pre-made chicken broth in place of simmering the bones and then just add the shredded rotisserie chicken at the end. While this is a very quick way to make chicken soup, creating your own broth will yield a much better flavor!
Chicken Noodle Soup Recipe Variations
- Creamy Chicken Noodle Soup: To make this soup, add two to four tablespoons of heavy cream or half-and-half.
- Add Lemon: To make this soup akin to lemon chicken soup, add three to four lemon slices.
- Mexican-Inspired Soup: Chop up some diced tomatoes and cubed avocado, add a couple of lime slices, and replace the noodles with rice. As we do in this chicken tortilla soup, you can even add chopped corn tortillas.
- Add Umami: For an incredibly satisfying, umami-packed soup, try adding a teaspoon of toasted sesame oil, some mushroom powder, or a few dashes of fish sauce.
- Add More Vegetables: To make the soup more vegetable-heavy, swirl in some fresh spinach or kale toward the end of cooking.
- Try potatoes, winter squash, rice, quinoa, or grains in place of the noodles. Add the onions and carrots to the pot, then add some hearty vegetables (like potatoes). Add cooked rice and other grains when using them.
- Use Tortellini: For this vegetarian tortellini soup, I love to use cheese-filled pasta.
