Mom's Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

I am a bit slow at posting this, but as promised I wanted to show you what I did with what was leftover from the Whole Chicken that I roasted last week. I was pretty tired on Sunday night and I didn't want to deal with the rest of the chicken that night so I stuck the leftover meat in a bowl in the fridge and then I just took my chicken carcass and drippings and covered it with saran wrap and tossed it in the fridge for the night. This actually works well because in the morning it is very easy to skim off any unwanted fat. Mine didn't have a lot because I had removed most of the skin from the chicken before roasting it.

I dumped the whole carcass and drippings into a big stock pot along with everything else I had roasted my chicken with and then added enough water to cover my chicken well. You can add more carrots, celery, and onion if you like at this point and you may want to if you are going to freeze or can the stock, but I didn't because I planned to use it right away for soup.

Bring your stock to a boil and allow it to simmer for several hours. When it is done simmer strain out the chicken and other bits, leaving only the stock. I love using my stock pot that has the colander that fits inside of it for this because when it is done simmering I can simply lift it out of the stock.

When you are done simmering you should have something that looks like this. You know you have good stock when it has a rich yellow color to it. It should also smell and taste very chickeny.
Save your chicken carcass to the side and let it cool while you work on cutting up veggies for your soup.

My Mom's chicken soup always had carrots, celery, and potatoes in it. I loved it! It was my favorite meal that she made. One thing that I add to my soup is sweet potatoes. They really make it yummy! I don't really know amounts to tell you. I just chop and dump stuff in. But I had a large stock pot and pictured to the right is what I put into my soup.

About 5 large carrots, 4 stalks of celery, 5 medium sized red potatoes, and 2 medium sized sweet potatoes. Peel them, chop them, and drop them into your broth. Bring it all to a boil and then let it simmer until your veggies are tender.

While your veggies are cooking tackle your chicken. Take your cooled chicken carcass and remove any remaining chicken.

Mine didn't have much left, because I had removed most of it the night before. On the plate is what I removed from the carcass and in the bowl is what I had removed the night before.

Overall I ended up with quite a bit of chicken left over though. I dropped all of it into my yummy soup. But you could also make a smaller pot of soup and only use half of the chicken and use the other half in a casserole or enchiladas and then you get three meals out of one chicken. At this point it is really easy to stick the chicken in a freezer container to be used for later if you want.

Take your homemade noodles that you made earlier - find out how here- and drop them into your boiling soup. 

Let your noodles cook for about 20 to 25 minutes. You can see how they all float up to the top as they get cooked. At this point your soup is done and ready to enjoy!

Mom's Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

Here it is hot and delicious! It really is my favorite winter time meal.

 Now just a few things I wanted to mention in case you want to make this delicious soup without using a whole chicken. Any type of chicken on the bone will work. But remember that it is the bone that makes the broth rich and delicious and imparts that wonderful chicken flavor. So boneless skinless breasts will not cut it. But you can use thighs, wings, drummies, breasts, or a combination. A whole cut up chicken works great. You don't need to roast the chicken ahead of time either you can just dump it into your stock pot and allow the chicken to cook in your stock water, and remove the meat from the bones later. I will often do it this way and then divide the cooked meat up into several freezer containers for future meals.

Even if you are not going to make soup this is a great way to cook your chicken for other meals, because you can make a stock by adding carrots, celery, and onion to the water you cook your chicken in and then you can can or freeze the stock to be used later. I use tons of chicken stock and it is very expensive to buy in the can and is loaded with salt and preservatives. Much healthy and yummier to make your own!

I promise to do future post on canning and freezing stock. I use several methods depending on what I want to use it for.

That is all for now, I hope you enjoy making and eating my favorite meal of all time! Thanks mom, for teaching me how and always making this for my birthday when I was a kid!