Chicken Noodle Soup for the (People Who Hate Being Sick) Soul
Right now, I am literally sitting in my kitchen, writing this post with the warmest hoodie that I own on, my infinity scarf wrapped around my head and neck, fuzzy socks and slippers on my feet with a cup of throat coat tea that Lily made for me.
If you hadn’t noticed already, I am absolutely terrible at being sick.
Since it was my turn to make something this week, I decided that what I needed to get over my terrible cold was some good old comfort food - chicken soup. Originally, I was going to make potatoes au gratin, but dairy products are a big no-no when you’ve got enough mucus to cover a small country (just kidding).
As usual, I only had a vague idea of what I was doing while making this, but that’s just part of the fun! I’ve slightly modified this recipe for the blog because I ended up making so much soup that it could probably feed a small army.
For this recipe, you’ll need:
- 4-6 cups of chicken stock
- ½ a box of tubettini (or pasta of your choice)
- Salt and pepper to season
Optional: jalapeño peppers & chicken flavored bouillon
First things first, get out the largest pot that you own and put just a drizzle of olive oil in it. I was going to cook each vegetable layer by layer (onions first, then carrots and celery, etc.) but then I realized that was going to take forever and everything was going to cook together anyway, so it wasn’t necessary to sauté them beforehand. I ended up only sautéing the onion, which I diced up first, in the pot because they take a bit more time to cook down than other ingredients.
Tonight, Alex - a good friend of Lily’s and mine - came over to help me out in my quest to make some chicken soup and nicely provided the chicken part of the recipe. Like anyone who comes into our kitchen, I quickly put him to work. While he took care of dicing up the tomato - my least favorite task - and chopping carrots into ½ inch pieces, I chopped up some celery sticks into 1-inch thick pieces. Normally, I’m not a big fan of celery, but you can’t have chicken soup without celery - it wouldn’t be right!
Once the onions were cooked and had become translucent, I decided it was time to add in the chicken stock. I used 12 cups of stock tonight, which was way more than I needed, so I recommend using 4-6 cups instead. I added in the rest of the vegetables into the broth, as well as the chicken breasts, which I left whole, and let it come to a simmer on a medium-high heat temperature. I also seasoned the broth with about 3 bouillon cubes, and of course, some salt and pepper. Be sure to stir the soup occasionally because you don’t want it to come to a hard boil; you just want a little bit of bubbling.
Then, I set a timer for 45 minutes, and prayed that everything would turn out well. It did, welllllll, sort of.
Things were going well at first. At about fifteen minutes in, I took out the chicken breasts that had been cooking in the stock and I had Alex take care of shredding it and adding it back to the soup because I had an epiphany - I realized that noodles would be a nice addition to what was just going to be a chicken soup at that point. Getting out a separate medium saucepan with some water, I cooked up some tubettini until it was al dente and added it to the soup.
Just when I thought I could relax while the soup was still doing its thing and I could do a bit of tidying up, I realized that I had completely forgot about the potatoes! Thinking fast, I grabbed another pot and filled it ¾ of the way with water because I figured it would be best if they were cooked separately from the rest of the soup. Alex peeled the potatoes, and I cut them into some poorly-shaped cubes to be honest, but they got into the pot and that is all that matters! In roughly twenty minutes, they were just soft enough to be added to the broth where they could cook some more.
With just 15 minutes left on the timer, I could finally let the soup simmer away and relax a bit. While I was making this recipe, Alex baked some awesome pumpkin muffins, which I basically inhaled.
At around five minutes or so, I took the pot off the heat and let everything settle down before serving it. Since I was feeling under the weather, I also chopped up two slices of jalapeños - a little kick for my sinuses. This part’s optional for those of you who don’t like spicy foods.
Then, dinner was finally served.
I’m not gonna lie, but I might have teared up a little bit while eating because I made some pretty delicious soup despite not really knowing what I was doing. Or it could have been the two jalapeños talking.
Anyway - this meal is perfect for those cold winter nights coming up, as well as those days where you just need some chicken noodle soup to cheer you up.
Let me know what you think about this recipe! And if you have your own comfort food recipes to share, tell us all about it at [email protected]!
