Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

Who doesn't like a nice bowl of chicken noodle soup when the weather is cold outside? It has always been a hit in our household, especially when I make my grandmothers homemade soup. I however am a busy mom of 6 and I admit I kept some cans of soup in my pantry for times when I was feeling lazy. As I mentioned in my last post we are cutting processed foods out of our diet so I went through our pantry and looked at the label for every single item in there. I was shocked when I looked at a ingredient list for canned soup.

Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup
INGREDIENTS:
Chicken stock, enriched egg noodles (wheat flour, egg solids, niacin, ferrous sulfate, thiamine, mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), cooked chicken meat, water, contains less than 2% of the following ingredients: salt, chicken fat, cooked mechanically separated chicken, monosodium glutamate, cornstarch, onion powder, modified food starch, yeast extract, spice extract, soy protein isolate, sodium phosphates, beta carotene for color, chicken flavor (contains chicken stock, chicken powder, chicken fat), flavoring, dehydrated garlic.

Oh my! So with every yummy spoonful you get a big dose of  MSG, phosphates, and who knows what is in those "Flavorings". All with some mechanically separated chicken...yuck!

Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup
Ingredients:
Homemade chicken bone broth (chicken bones and water)
Chicken (Mommy separated)
Egg noodles (Pasture fed eggs, flour, and water) *recipe below*
carrots
organic peas

How can you not feel better about how you are eating when you look at those two lists?! Plus it couldn't be easier if you do a little prep work here and there. I made my bone broth months ago and stored it in the freezer along with the leftover chicken I stripped from the bones. The carrots were peeled and cut up at the beginning of the week for snacks, and the peas were leftover from dinner the other night and stored in the freezer till needed. All I needed to do today was roll out the noodle dough and warm up the other ingredients. Super simple.

To make my soup I pulled out several cups of chicken bone broth out of the freezer and added it to my stockpot. How much you use depends on how much soup you are looking to make for your family. I would say acouple of quarts at least. Once the bone broth is warmed up I add my frozen chicken straight to the pot to reheat. After the chicken is heated through I add the carrot chunks and the egg noodles (recipe below). When you have all the noodles in the pot stir regularly from the bottom of the pot till the noodles are cooked through (about 20min depending on how full your pot is). I add my peas and any other leftover veggies I saved in right before I serve since they are already cooked through and I don't want them to turn to mush.

There you go super simple homemade chicken noodle soup without all the preservatives and MSG!  

Homemade egg noodles 

1 egg = 2 Tbsp water
egg/water mixture + enough flour to bring it together and make the dough smooth and not sticky

The great thing about this recipe is that you can make it for any sized family very easily. For each egg you add to the bowl add 2Tbsp of water then add enough flour to bring it together.

I personally do 4 eggs, 8Tbsp of water, and about 3 cups of flour. The amount of flour will vary depending on the size of your eggs. I usually start with 2 cups of flour and then work my way up to 3 cups, stopping once the dough comes together and is no longer sticky.

Once you have the dough mixed together sprinkle flour on your work station and roll the dough out as thin as you can get it. Don't use too much flour while rolling it out since flour on top of the noodles will come loose in the soup and you will have a floury mess in your pot.

Allow the noodles to dry for several hours. I roll mine out on the kitchen table after breakfast and they are dry enough to be used for lunch. The best plan would be to roll them out the night before however I have children who need to sit at the table to eat their meals. I remember when I was a child my mom could never roll them out too far in advance either since we had a very curious cat.

One the noodles are dry use a knife or a pizza cutter to cut the noodles into strips. Once your soup is up to a rolling boil use a spatula to get your noodles up off the work surface, dust the flour off of them, and drop them one by one into your soup being sure to stir after every couple of noodles (great job for kids!).    






    
How yummy does that look?!