- Hey, guys, for our final episode
of the Back to School Bonanza series,
I thought it was important to share with you my recipe
for homemade chicken soup.
Now, many of you are headed off
to college for the first time,
and this will be your first year away from home.
And during that year, I guarantee it,
and I hate to say this, but you will get sick.
And when you do, one of the biggest shockers is
that there isn't really anyone there to take care of you.
You'll be on your own unless you have a sympathetic roommate
or lucky enough to have a nice boyfriend or girlfriend,
which in college sometimes can be dicey, I remember.
So that's where I come in.
I'm going to arm you with this recipe,
because it will surely cure whatever ails you,
even if it just happens
to be a bad case of the homesick blues.
Now, to make this soup,
you're going to need a large soup pot.
And one of my favorite pots for making a soup
or a stew is a Le Creuset Dutch oven.
I can't say enough about these pots.
They are the Rolls-Royce of Dutch ovens.
They're enamel, cast iron, manufactured in France,
and they really will last a lifetime.
And they happen to be the feature of this week's giveaway.
So if you have always admired these pots,
and I know many of you have, now is your chance to win one.
All you have to do to enter is leave me a comment.
Let me know why you wanna win this pot,
and I'll pick my favorite comment and award the winner.
Now, remember, you have until October 7th
to enter this giveaway,
as well as all my other back to school giveaways.
So if you have someone in your life
that could really use a Le Creuset Dutch oven,
be share to share this video with them.
I wanna make sure as many people
as possible can enter this contest,
because this is an awesome prize
that would make any cook really happy.
The first thing we're going to do
is prep our carrots and celery.
Now, in prepping them, we are going to cut both
into half moons.
Now, the thing to remember is that
as you peel your carrots and trim your celery,
you wanna save all of those peels
and all of those trimmings.
This is going to go into our soup stock.
Now, not to worry, we're not gonna eat these things.
They're just gonna flavor the stock,
and we're gonna strain them out later,
but they're going to add a ton of flavor.
Then in our five-quart pot,
we're going to add our carrot peels, our celery trimmings,
one yellow onion which has been cut up.
You can actually leave the peels on and everything.
And some garlic.
Just make sure because we're using a lot of the peels
and the trimmings of these vegetables
that you wash them well beforehand.
Then we're gonna add some spices
in the form of some whole peppercorns,
some fresh thyme, and same fresh bay leaves.
Then you're going to add one whole chicken
that has been cut into eight pieces.
Now, just to fit the chicken all in the pot,
you may have to cut some of it.
Typically the breasts need to be cut in half.
And don't be afraid, don't be squeamish.
Just get in there with your chef's knife and cut it in half.
Break that little breastbone in two and throw it in the pot.
You're gonna fill the soup pot up with 10 cups of water,
put the lid on it,
and let it simmer on medium-low for at least an hour.
Now, I know you might be thinking,
ugh, this sounds like a lot of effort, but I'm telling you
this is the best chicken noodle soup recipe.
It does take a little time, but none of this is hard.
And this is gonna create a big batch of soup
that will feed you for at least a week,
so it's definitely worth doing,
and I'm sure you probably have some homework
to do or something.
Then after an hour,
you are going to remove your chicken with some kitchen tongs
and place it on a plate.
Don't worry if it catches some of the onions
and some of the trimmings.
That's okay, we can brush that off later.
Then you are going to take the soup pot
and pour it through a fine mesh sieve into another bowl.
That's is then gonna catch all of those solids.
You're gonna discard the solids,
and you are are gonna be left
with the most beautiful, rich, and delicious chicken broth.
Now, because we have used the whole chicken,
we have used dark meat and white meat.
The dark meat tends to be a lot fattier,
so you will see you will have some fat
that has accumulated in the broth.
Not to worry, we're gonna do one more step
to get rid of some of that fat.
You do wanna use the dark meat,
so don't be afraid and think,
oh, I'll just use all the white meat and avoid the fat,
because fat always equals flavor.
And I have tried this because I was curious
with just the white meat,
and you end up with a really dull tasting chicken broth
that has no flavor, so you do need the dark and the white.
Go ahead and clean out your strainer.
Then you're gonna line your strainer with some cheesecloth.
You can buy cheesecloth in your grocery store,
usually at that kitchen tool aisle.
That's where they sell it.
Go ahead and just create almost like a little bed
in your strainer and strain that broth one more time,
and you will see that cheesecloth will catch a lot
of the sediment and a lot of those particles
that have developed in your chicken broth.
Then you're gonna pour your broth
into a cleaned out stock pot.
And then the final step, again,
just to get rid of some of that additional fat,
is to just take a spoon and skim along the broth on the top
and you'll see you'll start to collect some of that fat
and strain it out.
(upbeat music)
Then you're gonna add your carrot
and celery half moons to your broth.
Put the lid on it and cook those just until tender.
And then meanwhile in a separate pot,
you're going to cook your egg noodles.
So I really like to get the wide egg noodles.
I think chicken noodle is just only so much better
when you have a nice chunky noodle.
Go ahead and cook the noodles
according to the package instructions.
Usually it's anywhere from six to eight minutes.
Now, here's on tip.
When cooking the noodles,
I tend to let them be undercooked a little bit,
just al dente, and the reason I do this is
because this soup makes a big batch.
So throughout the week,
you don't wanna heat up the full soup to make some of it,
because then you're reheating
and reheating the soup all week,
which is not a good thing to do.
You wanna just sort of parcel out the portion
that you're gonna use and heat that up.
And as you do that,
those noodles will just continue to get softer.
So if you start with al dente noodles,
you'll end up with noodles that are just perfectly soft
and not too mushy.
While your vegetables and noodles are cooking,
you can get on with prepping the chicken.
So what we're gonna do is remove the skin,
and then with two forks,
go ahead and start shredding the meat off the bone.
You just wanna shred it so that it's nice bite-size pieces.
Transfer it to a separate bowl and then set it aside.
Then go ahead and drain your noodles,
add them to the soup pot, and then add the chicken.
Then we're going to do the final layer of seasoning.
Now, when it comes to chicken noodle soup,
I do find that it's really enhanced with a lot of salt.
It just depends on how salty you like it.
I really like chicken noodle soup on the saltier side,
so here's what I would recommend.
The recipe calls for two teaspoons,
but add 'em in 1/2 teaspoon increments and keep tasting it.
And if you find that after one teaspoon
or 1 1/2 you're there, then stop.
You don't need to add the full two teaspoons.
Better to kinda taste as you go
then dump the whole thing in
and find it's too salty for you.
Then to that I also like to add some freshly cracked pepper
and a little bit of Italian seasoning.
I love the Italian seasoning because it has all
of these great Italian dried herbs all in one bottle.
But if you can't find it,
you could also use herbes de Provence
or a little bit of dried basil would be good too.
Basically your soup is done.
All you have to do is ladle out a big bowl of this
into a nice soup bowl, and then the finishing touch
is some freshly chopped flat leaf parsley.
Now, do not leave out the parsley.
It is really delicious, and it really should be fresh.
There is a great combination going on
with the dried herbs and the fresh herbs
with all that wonderful chicken flavor
and the noodles and the carrots.
It really is the perfect finishing touch.
So there you have it,
my world famous homemade chicken noodle soup.
I hope you guys don't wait
until you get sick to try this recipe.
It is that good.
Or if you wanna get prepared, you could make this soup,
put it into small containers,
and pop it in your freezer.
That way when you do get sick, you will have a beautiful,
comforting homemade chicken noodle soup just moments away.
Well, that completes our Back to School Bonanza
for this year.
I hope you guys have all enjoyed the recipes
and the giveaways.
I know that I have.
I'm gonna have a ball looking
through all of your comments and picking out the winners.
So good luck to everybody,
and I will see you back here next week
when you are going to kick off a month of comfort food.
That's right, I'm gonna show you
how to make some of the classics.
I'll see you then.