Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

There’s nothing that feels better when I’m sick than my mom’s chicken noodle soup. It was awful getting sick in college and having to make this for myself, I was pretty bad at it at first. It took me a few years to be able to make chicken noodle soup that’s as good as my mom’s but I’ve recently learned a few tricks to make consistently amazing chicken noodle soup.

  1. No water, I use only chicken stock or broth and my homemade bone broth
  2. DIY bone broth. Stick the carcass in a crockpot with the juice from the chicken and the herbs from the chicken plus a little extra water. Let this little baby sit on low in the crockpot for 18-24 hours. 
  3. Smoke the chicken if you can. WOAH this was a game changer in my last batch of soup! My husband just bought us a smoker and I will literally never make chicken noodle soup with regular baked chicken ever again.
Crock pot full of chicken bones and herbs to make bone broth

There’s not really a recipe per say, I let my heart (and stuffy nose) guide me but here’s what I throw into it: two-ish bunches of chopped celery, a bag of chopped up baby carrots, 1-3 onions, from scratch egg noodles, 64 ounces store-bought chicken stock or broth plus the bone broth I make, and all of the meat from this chicken

Orange, white, and purple baby carrots on a cutting board

I taste it and add herbs as needed (sage, thyme, garlic, rosemary, oregano…really just whatever smells good to me) but this last time I didn’t need to add any extra herbs because the chicken and bone broth were so seasoned already from their respective cooking processes.  

First, sauté your vegetables in oil until they’re soft, then add your broths and chicken. Let this mixture re-heat until it’s simmering a little bit, and then add in the noodles. 

Steaming pot of soup vegetables being stirred

Kind of space out the noodles so that they don’t stick to each other. You might need to add a little extra broth if the noodles seem to just be sitting on top of everything else. Once all of the noodles are in there, give it another 5-10 minutes, if you can wait that long, to let the noodles cook and the soup come to a pretty good boil. Welcome to the best chicken noodle soup of ya life.

Spoonful of chicken noodle soup in front of full bowl of chicken noodle soup

-Jen Lyman, RDN, LD, CLT

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