Can you Freeze Chicken Noodle Soup?
Without noodles, chicken noodle soup freezes beautifully because reheating and freezing them causes the noodles to get extremely mushy.
Before putting the soup (and only the soup, not the noodles) in freezer-safe containers or freezer-friendly zip-lock bags, let it cool completely in the refrigerator.
To reheat, take the soup out of the refrigerator and let it thaw overnight before putting it in a pot. Add noodles to the simmering soup or cook them separately.
It’s best to consume chicken noodle soup within five days, making sure to reheat it well each time.
How To Make Chicken Soup
To begin, we make a basic Soffritto (also known as mirepoix or sofrito). Also know as the holy trinity of cooking. A simple combination of three aromatics:
To create the flavor foundation for this soup, all three are sautéed together.
To make a filling and savory soup, use chicken legs or thighs. In comparison to white meat (breast), the darker meats and bones have a stronger flavor, making for a richer, more flavorful broth. When your soffritto is cooked, add them in with your broth (or stock).
An optional addition that gives your broth a lot of flavor is crushed bouillon. If bouillon is not available, substitute regular stock powder or leave it out!
After the chicken is cooked through and falls off the bone, shred it with forks and return the meat to the soup.
What You Need to Make Easy Chicken Noodle Soup
- While they differ slightly, both chicken broth and chicken stock can be used in the majority of soup recipes. A tasty broth is essential to any good chicken noodle soup, whether it’s homemade or purchased from the store. Traditional chicken broth for chicken noodle soup is clear and light, usually made by simmering chicken in water with fresh herbs or spices.
- Vegetables: A combination of onion, celery, and carrots (known as mirepoix) is the most frequently used vegetable in traditional chicken noodle soup in the US.
- Herbs: For this version, I kept things very basic and added some freshly chopped parsley just after the soup was cooked. Other widely used herbs are thyme, rosemary, and oregano, both fresh and dried.
- Noodles: Since egg noodles have a higher egg to wheat ratio and generally hold up a little better in steaming bowls of hot chicken soup, they are traditionally added.
- Chicken: To cook, simmer bone-in chicken pieces in water for the duration of the recipe. This will make the base chicken stock. When the soup is almost done, the cooked chicken will be taken out and the meat will be shredded off the bones and returned to the soup.
