CHICKEN NOODLE SOUP

Ingredients

For the Broth

  • 4 Chicken Legs

  • 4 Boneless, Skinless Chicken Thighs

  • 24 cups (5.7L) Water

  • Enough Better Than Bouillon for 12 cups (2.8L) of broth

  • 13 cloves (39g) Garlic

  • 1½ Green Bell Peppers

  • 1½ Red Bell Peppers

  • 1 Orange Bell Pepper

  • 6 Habanero Peppers

  • 1 Vidalia Onion

  • 1 Yellow Onion

  • 3 small (130g) Carrots

  • 3 small (90g) Celery Ribs

  • 6 Scallions

  • 6 ears Corn, kernels cut off the cob

Add-Ins

  • Dumplings (see separate recipe)

  • Noodles of Choice (recommended: spaghetti or udon, cooked separately)

Method

  1. Make the Broth Base – In a large pot, combine water, Better Than Bouillon, garlic, bell peppers, habaneros, onions, carrots, celery, and scallions. Bring to a boil.

  2. Add Chicken – Once boiling, add chicken legs and chicken thighs. Skim off impurities. Cover and simmer for 45 minutes, skimming occasionally.

  3. Prepare the Dumplings – Mix dough and shape dumplings (see separate recipe).

  4. Blend the Vegetables – After 45 minutes, remove all vegetables and blend them with some of the broth until smooth.

  5. Add Corn & Shred Chicken – While blending, add corn to the broth. Remove chicken from the pot and shred or debone as needed.

  6. Combine Everything – Return blended vegetables and shredded chicken to the pot. Bring to a boil and add dumplings. Boil for 15–20 minutes.

  7. Finish with Noodles – Cook noodles of choice separately. Add them to bowls when serving to avoid soaking up broth.

Additional Notes

I clearly used a mixture of legs and thighs. I think breast is just less flavorful, so I didn’t use it—but ultimately, you can use whatever cut you like.

I eat this soup on occasion because I feel like it, and always when I’m sick. I add habaneros for that heat to knock the sickness out of me and, as you all know, it goes without saying—I LOVE spicy food. That being said, I’ve used whole Cayenne peppers before, but habaneros are just easier to come by. You can omit the hot peppers altogether if you don’t want it spicy.

If you’re looking to save time, you can use canned or frozen corn, but as I’ll say here (and I’m sure I’ve said in other recipes), nothing beats corn freshly cut off the cob.

Many times when I made this soup, I used egg noodles, which I tossed in right with the dumplings at the end. What ends up happening is, once you put it in the fridge and are ready to eat it the next day, the noodles soak up all the broth. You end up with extremely soggy noodles and have to make more broth. That seems like an obvious outcome, but I figured I’d just say that anyway, lol.

What I decided to try this time was udon noodles. Udon takes about 2 minutes to loosen up and hardly adds any time before you’re ready to eat. They were good, but the problem is, with udon and dumplings, there’s so much starch going on. I didn’t really enjoy it that much, and I heavily prefer dumplings in this particular soup, if I had to choose.

For me, what I’ve concluded to make the perfect bowl of soup is to simply cook your portion of noodles each time before you have your bowl. I go into my pot, ladle the soup into a separate pot on the stove to heat it up (you can use a microwave, but I don’t see why you would, since the noodles take time to cook anyway). While the soup heats up, I boil water and cook my noodles of choice. Here, I used spaghetti, and I’d say spaghetti takes about 7–10 minutes to cook. This might sound tedious, but it’s extremely easy, and you get perfect noodles and the perfect soup every time. When everything is done. drain the noodles, add it to the soup you just heated up, and boom, perfection.

THIS MAKES A LOT OF SOUP. Feel free to cut the recipe in half. But as someone who lives alone, I think this soup is so good I can eat it all by myself.