- Hey, I'm John Kanell,
and today on "Preppy Kitchen,"
we're making an easy and amazing chicken noodle soup.
So let's get started.
First off, grab a big pot or Dutch oven,
we're gonna be heating everything up in here.
Sharp knife, cutting board, and your veggies.
Starting off with one onion,
I'm gonna cut this up,
and I'm prefacing this video by saying that
today I'm using stock I already have on hand,
not making it for the video.
If you want a chicken stock video, you let me know,
because it's an easy and delicious thing
that you can make and have on hand.
Give everything a nice dice, smaller pieces.
This would all fit onto a spoon,
so you don't want any giant chunks.
Same time, though, don't worry about it looking perfect.
It's a rustic soup.
(knife thuds)
I love all kinds of soup.
It's like one of my favorite things to have.
And this soup is just something that's so restorative,
and this brings back childhood memories, it warms you up,
and makes you feel good.
We're adding garlic to the soup, of course,
it gives you a ton of flavor.
I want to tell everyone at home, this is garlic.
That stuff you get in a jar is not, it is an illusion.
So don't buy that.
Don't use it.
It's a total time-saver, which I get,
but this flavor is gonna be much more amazing.
So, the recipe calls for four garlic cloves,
but I'm feeling seven or eight garlic cloves
on this right now.
And if anyone says anything, I'm making it the whole head.
Give it a smash.
These skins are like one of my least favorite parts
about dealing with garlic.
That it's like sticky.
But, giving it a smash removes it really easily
and also helps release the oil that's inside of the garlic,
giving you a ton of flavor.
Let's give it a nice mince.
(knife thuds)
I had a lot of viewer requests for this recipe.
And today, Lachlan and George
are a little bit under the weather,
so this soup is gonna make them feel really great.
Almost through my chopping,
but right now we're gonna go into our pot
and get it nice and cozy,
so those veggies have a place to go.
Whenever you're making something like soup,
you just want to keep going,
not waiting around in the kitchen, doing nothing.
So go ahead and stage things up.
A little bit of chopping, get the butter heated,
finish the chopping.
There's so many variations on chicken noodle soup.
I'm gonna give you a couple suggestions
throughout the video.
If you want one of my favorite Greek varieties
of avgolemono, it's in my cookbook.
You can pre-order it now.
Link in the description box below.
Following the bite-size rule,
some of your carrots a little bit large.
So instead of having giant carrot moons
we're also gonna be chopping those up
just a little bit more.
When you chop the carrots, don't go paper thin on this
because they will just dissolve into nothing
as you touch them once the soup all heated up.
They need a little bit of body and substance,
so bite size, but substantial.
There we go.
That looks great.
Big rustic stick pieces of carrot.
See, we also want three celery ribs.
Celery gets a bad wrap.
It is so packed with flavor.
We grow it in our garden during the growing season.
And one, you'll find out it needs a lot of water to grow
and some sandy soil, but it is so flavorful.
This stuff's good, too.
It's not quite as like celery forward
but it'll play really nicely in our dish.
Once again, you want to have slightly chunky pieces here.
Don't go too thin.
I can see my butter is smelling amazing.
This Browning butter isn't burnt.
It's just caramelizing and giving you even more flavor.
Gonna add the onions,
the carrots
the celery, and the garlic as well.
Add the garlic in last, I like.
I don't want it to burn.
So over this medium heat
I'm gonna stir frequently because I want everything to cook.
The garlic is gonna melt and impart a ton of flavor.
It's not really melting,
but the flavor is gonna melt in your mouth.
And you just don't want anything to burn,
so stir, stir, stir about eight minutes.
It will depend on your cook top though.
Propane, so hot.
Gas, ah, nice and medium,
and electric is all over the place.
Electric takes longer.
If you're like, John, this sounds great.
I don't have the time.
I really just like watching cooking shows.
I don't like actually cooking.
Let me tell you, here are the time savers.
You're gonna use store-bought chicken broth.
You're gonna buy a mirepoix mixture from the supermarket.
And that is just carrots, celery, and onion pre-chopped.
You get them in a big deli container.
They're in the grocery store
in your veggie section.
Pop that in and you're just mincing the garlic.
I'm still making you mince the garlic.
And then there are also like so many varieties
that you could do for this.
Today, for example, I'm gonna use chicken breasts
because at my house, everyone else loves white meat.
I love the flavorful dark meat, but that's okay.
We compromise.
You could use the whole chicken
and there's different ways to do that.
It's like, there's just a ton of variety here.
Also more veggies, swap out the veggies.
you could add peas and anything else it's really forgiving.
So it's just about what do you have on hand
and what do you love eating?
So right now I'm stirring and I'm looking for the onions
to turn translucent and they're almost there.
They have a beautiful buttery color right now
and they're getting very close.
The more they cook down
they're gonna get a little bit sweeter.
It's just some more depth of flavor.
And you also want those onions
to give you everything they have.
Speaking of the chicken, I have two pounds of
boneless, skinless chicken breasts right here.
You could use bone-in, skin-on if you wanted.
You could have quarters or thighs or whatever else.
This is gonna be some more picking apart later
which is totally fine.
Once your onions are nice and translucent
we're gonna add our chicken breasts in.
Make some room just so it has contact on the pan.
It's kind of optional but I like doing that.
And two pounds is gonna be three good-sized chicken breasts.
I have one extra here for something else delicious.
I'm also gonna grab some bay leaves.
These guys are gonna steep in the broth
we're gonna add, and give you so much flavor.
Bay leaves are amazing.
And they really add another wonderful note
to any dish they're in.
It's time for about eight cups of chicken stock.
You can add your own homemade chicken stock.
You can buy it
you can borrow it and it will work just great.
It's time to bring this to a simmer
and then we can reduce to medium low heat.
Right now it's fairly cold.
The inner science teacher in me has to say this
chicken soup gets such a good reputation for being good
when you have a cold or you're ill
and this is why.
One, yes, it's nutritious.
That's great.
Has a lot of liquids.
That's also great, but you're eating it warm
with a bowl.
Should be actually hot, it's not warm.
And the steam is going into your nostrils.
It's killing the virus.
It's the heat from the steam
that's helping clear you out
and also like shed some of that virus away.
It's also why tea is good for you, too.
Hmm.
Once your soup comes to a simmer
we're gonna reduce the heat down to medium low
and let that bubble away
until the chicken cooks all the way through.
It'll be about 20 minutes, but it totally depend on the size
of the chicken pieces you're using as well as the type.
So just keep an eye on it.
And if you want, you could definitely use a thermo pen
or whatever, just to temp it out
and make sure it's all the way cooked through.
It's better safe than sorry.
Here I used bay leaves so far,
but if you wanted to, you could add a sprig of rosemary.
You could add some more thyme to it.
I'm gonna be adding a couple more fresh herbs
at the very end, but they're more delicate.
So they really are just gonna be a final finish.
The more woody ones like rosemary
you can add now and they'll impart their flavor
as that warm liquid steeps into them.
In fact, why don't we add some fresh thyme right now?
There's a couple things you could do.
You could just add thyme in whole and fish it out later.
You could have also given it a really fine chop
or strip the leaves off like this.
You could also wrap it in cheese cloth
and drop that right in.
Someone's been stealing my cheese cloth though.
Not gonna name names.
These guys can go right in here.
They're gonna be delicious.
I'll just fish them out later.
Scratch that.
I'm gonna make a better choice and tie this together
in a little bouquet of onions, garlic and thyme.
In that way it'll be much easier to fish out
and I won't have any stray stems stocking around.
These guys tempt at 160, they are done.
So I'm taking my chicken out
setting it aside to cool for just a few minutes
because it's scalding hot and needs to rest.
And while that cools, just want to talk to you
about the added flavoring.
I'm gonna finish this soup off with lemon juice.
It really brightens things up
but I can't waste a lemon zest situation.
So I'm using my Ras,
but I'm just gonna add a little bit of lemon zest
into the soup.
It will also give me a ton of flavor.
My chicken's a bit cooler.
So I'm going to give it a cut.
I have a thing about chopped chicken though,
that and burnt eggs.
So just rip it up into pieces.
I think that looks much better.
They'll also sit nicer on your spoon.
This is going back into the pot
and everything's gonna come together really quickly now.
One thing I wanna tell you is
if you're making this soup ahead of time
or if you're making it, you want to freeze,
which you can do, although not the best,
just don't add the noodles until you're ready to serve.
So when you're warming it up, add the noodles back in,
let them cook.
In that way they'll have a little bit of texture,
Otherwise, they'll be like those mush noodles
you get in a can, which are not cool.
You can let me know in the comments
if shredded chicken is your thing,
or if you find the cubed chicken to be more appealing.
All right, chicken's all in there.
Give it a stir.
And it's time to taste this.
What seasonings do we want in here?
I'm gonna add some salt and pepper.
About three quarters of a teaspoon of salt
is a nice place to start
but you could taste it right away.
Sometimes stock can be a little salty.
It depends.
Let's see where we're at.
Oh my God, it's hot.
My tongue just burnt off.
It's pretty close.
Add a little bit more salt in there.
I'm increasing the heat to medium
and we're gonna add about two cups of egg noodles.
In you go.
These guys are so silky and amazing
once they're cooked.
Stir that in, just need to be covered up.
And about the egg noodles, there's two things.
One, they will soak up a good amount of liquid.
So your soup's been simmering away
and it's getting a little bit low.
You can add some water in.
You could add some more chicken stock in
if you have it.
Two, don't cook your egg noodles
until they're all the way cooked through.
They should just be at the al dante stage
because they will continue cooking
as you set your soup aside
and label it out to everybody else.
So by the time your soup reaches a hungry mouth
those noodles will be ready.
But if you cook them to perfection in the pot
they'll be a little bit mushy.
We're gonna look to simmer away for five to eight minutes.
Remember, they're on the al dante side.
I love seeing all these little thyme leaves throughout.
It's a nice addition.
And these guys are all still together for the most parts.
So my noodles are just tender right now.
Mm.
They're gonna soften up a little bit more
and trying to finish this soup off.
So giving a little bit of parsley
and just chop two tablespoons or more,
totally depends on your taste.
Ha,
right in there.
And I happen to have some fresh dill today.
It's optional.
I'm gonna add it in.
I love dill and everything.
This soup is still flat and lifeless.
What am I doing?
I'm gonna add a lemon in.
It's gonna fix everything.
Here's the deal.
Lemon, do you love it?
Are you like lemon?
I am part Greek, so I am a fanatic for lemon.
That's all I can say.
I'm gonna add the whole lemon in here.
You could do a tablespoon, a teaspoon, it's really to taste.
Like I said earlier in my cookbook,
I have Greek lemon soup
which is Greek egg lemon soup, avgolemono
just my childhood all-time favorite soup.
So I'm gonna replicate some of the flavor here
just by adding a bit more lemon.
It really lifts the whole soup up
and gives you a wonderful finish.
The last thing we're gonna do is one final taste.
That is so nice.
That is a delicious, just comforting, nourishing,
warming, amazing bite.
I hope you get a chance to make this recipe.
And if you like this video, check out my soup playlist.