Homemade chicken noodle soup, completely from scratch

Soups are great for the fall, winter, and holiday seasons: they're hearty, warming, nourishing, and comforting at the same time.  Chicken noodle soup is particularly good during this time because it happens to overlap unfortunately with cold and flu season, and as everyone knows, chicken soup can be quite helpful for dealing with a cold or the flu.  It's also a Southern favorite, perfect for Knoxvillians to enjoy!

Homemade soups can be very, very good, and with a little extra effort (okay... kind of a lot of extra effort), you can make your own gourmet chicken noodle soup entirely from scratch, noodles and all, one so good that it's worth all of the extra time and energy it takes to make it.  Plus, you get the added benefits of knowing exactly what's in your soup (for instance, you probably won't add MSG or BHT like you might find in canned varieties, which on the whole, are not very good and fall very short of gourmet).

To do it, you'll need a good chicken stock.  You can get a prepackaged one if you know of one that you really like, but don't skimp here.  While they can appear pretty expensive, these are the backbone of your soup, and so you need to use good stuff.  Expect to pay at least $4 or $5 per quart, and you'll need at least a quart or two to do this right, depending on how much soup you want.  If you want to make your own stock, click here for a recipe.  It's really quite easy and makes your house smell great.

Ingredients for the soup:

1. One whole chicken, cut into pieces if desired (a cooked chicken, say by a rotisserie at your grocery store can be used instead, as can leftover roast chicken.  See the directions below for this variation);
2. One sweet or red onion, quartered and sliced rather thinly;
3. Two or three carrots, cut into small pieces or shoestrings, depending on the texture you like;
4. One potato, cut into half-inch cubes;
5. One turnip or small rutabaga, cut into half-inch cubes;
6. One or two ribs of celery, cut into quarter-inch slices (or larger, if you like more texture);
7. One shallot, chopped rather finely;
8. Two to five cloves of garlic, depending on tastes, crushed and chopped finely;
9. Three or four large sprigs of fresh parsley, chopped finely;
10. Half a cup of frozen sweet, green peas;
11. Three tablespoons of unsalted butter;
12. Salt, pepper, and white or red wine vinegar to taste;
13. One to two quarts of chicken stock plus water to desired volume;
14. One three-cups-of-flour recipe of homemade noodles, shaved works well as do rags.

Directions:

1. Heat the butter over medium-high heat in a large pot until it is melted and bubbling lightly, and then add all of the hard vegetables: onion, carrot, celery, potato, and turnip/rutabaga.  Salt the vegetables lightly and let them cook for 5-6 minutes or until the carrots start to soften a little and the onions become translucent.
2. Add the garlic and shallot and continue to cook this way for about 2 more minutes.
3. Splash the veggies with vinegar and then add the stock.  Stir thoroughly and let the mixture come up to a boil.  Reduce the heat to medium and add the (raw) chicken.  Add more stock or water to completely or almost completely cover the chicken or to the desired volume of soup. Cover the pot.
4. Let this cook for approximately an hour, stirring occasionally, until the chicken is ready to pull away from the bones.  Then carefully remove the chicken from the pot, let it cool for about 10-15 minutes, and then proceed to pull it apart with fingers and/or forks (if you got a cooked chicken, this is where the instructions for it start). Discard the bones and set the meat aside.  In the meantime, while this cooks, prepare the noodle dough.
5. Just after the chicken is pulled apart, add your fresh noodles to the pot (either shaving them in or  preparing them separately ahead of time and adding them all at once).  Stir gently and let them cook for 3-4 minutes.
6. Add the chopped parsley, peas, and cooked chicken meat back into the pot.  Let the flavors mingle for 1-2 minutes and then taste test.  It will probably need salt and pepper and perhaps another light splash of vinegar (if you want it to taste "perkier").
7. Serve hot and enjoy, particularly with crusty sourdough bread.

An important note is that if you add water to your recipe, then you will dilute the flavor of your soup, so do so sparingly, particularly if you use a pre-cooked chicken.  You're better off with adding a good, flavorful stock and not being cheap with it, at least if you want it to taste good.

Buy it locally! All of the ingredients in this recipe are widely available locally, but you can improve the dish considerably by picking up some premium-quality chicken from Laurel Creek Farms Pasture Raised Meats in Sunbright, TN, which has a retail location at The Market at Washington and High in Maryville as well as having stops at farmers' markets in Knoxville, Maryville, and Oak Ridge.  See the link to their website for more information.

Read more about the author's culinary exploits, including this recipe and how he used it, at his personal cooking blog, The Untrained Gourmet, in particular the subject heading "soup" and the post about this featured recipe.