How to make a Damn good Chicken Noodle Soup

Making Chicken Noodle Soup is one of my favorite things to cook. There is nothing more special than bringing someone who feels under the weather a fresh bowl of Chicken Noodle Soup. Which was the case with my recent batch of soup. The BF was feeling under the weather, of course with no help from me passing him my cold, but I felt I should cheer him up. While making the soup, I figured I capture some of the images and give ya'll my recipe, which, i don't use one so this will be interesting.

First I start of with a good whole chicken. In this case, I decided on baking a cornish hen. Kroger had a special on two Perdue cornish hens in one package. I made the Cornish Hen before using the recipe on the back of the pacakage...which I suggest y'all to do someday.

Well, simply set your oven to 350, cover the hen/chicken with salt and pepper. Don't need to go too crazy with spicing up the chicken when it bakes, b/c you will be adding more spices to the broth.

While the chicken is in the oven baking (which don't forget to baste the chicken throughout the baking process) get a pot of water started to a boil. Then put in your choice of Vegetable Bouillon. You don't want to use Chicken Bouillon or canned Chicken Broth. You will be adding the carcass later, so which will be too chickeny tasting broth. I like using bouillon cubes that are more on the sticky side than dry cubes, they tend to have a lot of flavor and spices to them.

This part of the broth is your basis. Make sure the bouillon is good and mixed into the water, by having the bouillon boil in the water throughout the baking and deboning portion of this recipe. I choose to use 14 cups of water this go around, which calls for two bouillon cubes.

Ah, my favorite part. Deboning of the chicken! or in this case, cornish hen. Since this isn't a pretty carving like Thanksgiving dinner, you can hack up the chicken and carcass any way you wish. Get your hands dirty and don't be scared to pull off the meat with your hands. Every piece you want to use for the chicken pieces, set aside. I use a tuperware container b/c it's easy to close and set aside.

Once you have removed all the pieces of chicken, take the carcass, all of it, and place into your broth. Let your eye be on a medium to high setting, becuase you want the broth to eventually come to a boil. This will cook off the rest of the meat and make your broth more savory. during this time, I'm sitting on the couch catching up on So You Think You Can Dance on Tivo.

The rest of the ingredients! This can change according to your flavor choice. The basics, though, noodles (duh), onion (i prefer a sweet onion....oh especially vidalias, but pictured here is a yellow sweet onion), garlic, carrots (not pictured b/c i didn't have any), celery (i decided on a green bell pepper due to I grew it in my garden, but I like the taste better than celery), then finally parsley (grown from my garden)

Chop each ingredient (except for the chicken and garlic) up into cubes, makes it easier to cook in the broth, and bite size so each spoonful has all soup ingredients.

Toss the chopped ingredients into the broth, of course after you remove all bones from the broth first. Don't place the chicken or noodles in yet. Don't want to over cook the chicken, or have the noodles become too mushy.

let the broth and vegetables simmer in your broth. next press the garlic into the broth. I use two garlic cloves for this size of soup pot, you can use more garlic according to your personal taste, or size of soup you are making.

After letting the vegetables cook in the broth, and allowing the garlic to fully penetrate throughout the soup, finally add your chicken and noodles. Once the noodles come to an al dente point, it's time to serve and enjoy!

I have not tried to freeze this soup yet, I know some heartier soups freeze well, but not too sure about chicken noodle. This soup, however, keeps in the fridge in a Tupperware container for about a week. Ha! If it even lasts that long. This particular batch only lasted for dinner and next day's lunch.