Chicken Noodle Soup (Usually)

Homemade chicken noodle soup is a beautiful thing, though it took me a long time to realize it. I grew up on the Campbell's stuff, and on the rare occasion my mom would make it from scratch, I thought it was inferior to its canned counterpart. Children are weird, I guess.

Apparently I grew out of it, though, because two weekends ago, when I was sick, I woke up in the almost-early-afternoon with a craving for homemade chicken noodle soup. Perhaps it was a part of my so-called "health kick," but even the tornado-noodled Progresso we have stashed in our cupboard didn't seem good enough for what I wanted. So I did a little searching for the most basic chicken noodle soup recipe possible, and found something perfect to build on.

Just a couple of days ago, I made it again, taking advantage of some of the ingredients we now had on hand. It proved once again to be just about the best thing ever. Even if the only non-frozen meat we had was leftover pork roast.







Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup
Adapted from MARYVM's Quick and Easy Chicken Noodle Soup // Serves about 3

Ingredients
1-1/2 teaspoons butter
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup chopped celery
2 (14.5 ounce) cans low fat chicken broth (I estimate this to about 3.5 cups)
1/2 (14.5 ounce) can vegetable broth (About a cup or so)
1/4 pound chopped cooked chicken breast (=1 can of canned chicken, or a breast or two)
3/4 cup pasta noodles of choice
1/2 cup sliced carrots
1/2 cup frozen white corn (or whatever corn floats your boat)
small handful fresh parsley
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
herbs de provence
salt and pepper to taste


Directions
In a large pot over medium heat, melt butter. Cook onion and celery in butter until just tender, about 5 minutes. Pour in chicken and vegetable broths and stir in chicken, noodles, carrots, corn, parsley, basil, oregano, herbs de provence, salt, and pepper. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer 20 minutes (or until noodles and carrots are done) before serving.


This makes about a regular pot-full of soup, which can feed me a couple of times in a day, depending on how hungry I am. My roommates usually have some, too.

Just realize that the measurements here are more like guidelines, which I haven't followed the couple of times I've made the soup. I probably put in closer to a teaspoon of all of the herbs, and varying-sized handfuls of the fresh vegetables. I don't really even measure the noodles, but I should, because they always tend to take over.

The corn you could leave out, but I love corn, and always keep the frozen stuff on hand in the freezer so I can sneak it into meals whenever I feel like it. It also adds a surprising little hint of sweetness to the soup that goes along nicely with the herbs de provence.

Herbs de provence in chicken noodle soup is amazing! (Are amazing? The high school French student in me is confused about how to proceed with this.) I will never, ever leave it out if I can help it. One of my roommates happened to bring a jar with her at the beginning of the year; I'd never used the spice mix before, but now I love it!

If you don't have vegetable broth, that's fine. I have vegetable bouillon cubes I like to stick in things, so I make an extra-concentrated broth with that.





Note the garnish of fresh parsley. Oh yeah.

And if it seems silly that I'm blogging about chicken noodle soup, well... I'm a strong believer in the simple things.