What Type of Noodles?
Though any kind of noodles will work in this soup, my mom’s version of chicken noodle soup always used homemade egg noodles!
- Make your own egg noodles with just flour, salt, milk, and eggs; they’ll be done in five minutes!
- Farfalle pasta
- Elbow macaroni
- Rotini
How to Make Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup:
Use a rotisserie chicken to make homemade chicken stock in advance, or select a high-quality brand from the store.
Sauté veggies. Put butter, chopped carrots, and celery in a big stock pot and heat it to medium-high. Sauté for 3 minutes. Add garlic and cook for another 30 seconds.
Add chicken stock or broth. Add pepper, salt (make sure to taste the broth before adding extra salt), and a small pinch of crushed red pepper, sage, and rosemary to the broth. If necessary, I might also add a tiny spoonful of “better than bullion” chicken or chicken bouillon powder, depending on how it tastes.
Add noodles and boil. When boiling, add the noodles (dried store-bought pasta or the raw homemade egg noodles) and cook until just al dente. When using store-bought noodles, take care not to overcook them; they will continue to cook off of the heat, so take the soup pot off of the heat as soon as the noodles are just barely tender.
Add chicken. Add chicken meat from the rotisserie chicken. Taste the broth again and add more seasonings, if needed.
Serve. If you enjoy this recipe, you should try my new Chicken and Dumpling Soup! I love to serve this nutritious soup with homemade rolls or this simple No Knead Bread!
Regarding seasoning, if you cook egg noodles in chicken broth, they will acquire a mild chicken flavor. But I’m more concerned about the salt. Every time I cook pasta, I calculate that one quart of water needs a generous tablespoon of kosher salt. It goes without saying that a broth would be far too salty for this. Thus, if you cook the noodles in the broth, the noodles will turn bland or the broth will need to be oversalted.
The most sensible method is to add noodles to soup in order to make noodle soup. Put another way, cook the noodles directly in the broth, then transfer the entire shebang into a bowl and proceed to serve. This avoids using up another dirty pot and adds flavor to the noodles. Win-win, right?.
I was creating a recipe for chicken noodle soup with just two ingredients a few months ago. My weekly column, Big Little Recipes, loves challenges like this one: making chicken stock that emphasizes the chicken over the onion, celery, carrot, bay leaves, and peppercorns. And yet: The chicken stock wasn’t what ended up being the most thought-provoking. It was the noodles.
I wasn’t so sure. First, what happens to the leftovers? Fortunately, broth keeps well in the refrigerator or freezer. The noodles are not content to stay in the broth in the refrigerator or freezer, which is the bad news. Even by tomorrow morning, they’ll be swollen, soggy, and mushy. (Just consider the instances when you overcook noodles by even a few minutes.) ) From Our Shop.
You’re giving the noodles the best chance to become their best selves—well salted and well cooked—by cooking them in a separate pot. I like to boil the noodles, drain them, then add some to each bowl, then ladle the broth (along with any contents) over the top. After that, you can store the broth and noodles in the refrigerator separately and enjoy perfectly cooked noodle soup for several days.
