Lily's Chicken Noodle Soup from Scratch

Chicken Noodle Soup from Scratch

Ingredients: servings - a butt load (I'm not sure, perhaps 12 or more?)

• sea salt.
• thyme.
• a bit of brown sugar.
  
• parsley flakes.
• a few cloves of garlic.
  
• soy sauce.
• chicken broth.
• water.
  
• 6 red potatoes.
• 2 petioles/bundles of celery.
• 1 pound of carrots.
• 1 sweet onion.
• 4 thingeys of green onion.
  
• frozen corn.
• chicken breast.
  
• 1 pound of rotini.
  

Directions:

I haven't made chicken noodle soup in quite some time, but when Manda mentioned it, putting it on our menu sounded great. Didn't look at her recipe, because I was already too excited about my own plans for the soup. For me, this doesn't count as a quick meal to serve. I took nearly an hour and a half preparing this, using nearly all fresh vegetables (the exception was corn). I kept busy peeling and cutting carrots, washing and cutting celery, cutting the sweet onion, washing and cutting the green onions, you get the idea. But, I probably wouldn't qualify to be on Hell's Kitchen, with my pace of preparation. Chef Ramsay would be yelling down my throat for working too slow, I am certain. That being said it ended up being delicious.

I ended up using 3 pots/pans to cook this soup. The stock pot you see above is where everything ended.

In the stock pot, I put in water, chicken broth, and already prepared (cut, washed, or whatever was needed) red potatoes (I kept the skin on), celery, carrots, garlic. In a pan, I stir fried the onion with a bit of olive oil. I've been into some version of caramelizing onions lately; I cooked it until it was well done and sprinkled it with some brown sugar. Once done, I added most of the onion to the stock pot, leaving behind just a few onions and the remaining juice (and oil), in which I cooked cut up chicken breast. I used 1/4 of a package of family size chicken breast (I buy them on sale, when they are less than $1.80 per pound for family size packages).

While the stuff in the stock pot was cooking, and the chicken breast was cooking in the pan, I cooked the rotini pasta in a separate pot. I ended up using an entire box, 1 pound.

When the contents inside the stock pot (esp. the carrots, celery, and red potatoes) were tender and cnce the pasta and the chicken breast were ready, into the stock pot they went. I added sea salt, thyme, parsley flakes, soy sauce, and corn. Didn't use much soy sauce, maybe a few tbsp full. Same with parsley flakes and thyme, perhaps a few tbsp. Kept an eye on the soup level. Ended up using approximately 50/50 ratio of water and chicken broth (equal proportion of each, in other words). Once everything was brought to a boil, I turned the stove off, put the lid on, and left for church. It was another hour and a half before we got to enjoy the fruits of the labor. That was plenty of time for the flavor to soak in and the soup was still hot when we got home (it's a huge stock pot, and I left the lid on it).