Recipes – № 35
Chicken Noodle Soup
If you’re like most people, when you’re not feeling well you want to slurp chicken noodle soup. The healing powers of this restorative broth are undisputed but I’ve always wondered, whether those powers were rooted in any of the soup’s ingredients or in the knowledge that someone made it for you with love. If it’s the latter, then this uncompromising recipe should be the Mayo Clinic of all chicken noodle soups. It’s essentially cooked five times: You start with homemade chicken broth for clean, deep flavors, then steep chicken breasts in hot broth away from the heat for the most succulent, super moist meat, then flavor the broth with additional aromatic vegetables, then briefly boil more vegetables to serve in the soup and finally boil some pasta for sustenance. Sounds like too much work? Well, I’ve made it sound worse than it is. More importantly, do you love your patient or not?
The basic recipe for this soup is from Alice Water’s fantastic The Art of Simple Food. I’ve adapted it, mostly to yield a more reliably juicy chicken.
Serves 8 (because healthy people will want some too)
1 pair of chicken breasts
2 quarts chicken broth, preferably homemade
2 carrots
1 small parsnip (optional)
2 parsley sprigs
4 oz fettuccine noodles
1 small fresh dill sprig (around 2 tsp chopped, optional)
Remove the chicken breasts from the fridge 1 hour before cooking and separate any skin or bones from the meat. Set the skin and bones aside in the fridge. Season the chicken breasts with kosher salt on both sides.
Bring the chicken broth to a boil with some salt (if unsalted), remove from the heat and place the chicken breasts inside the hot broth. Cover and let steep for 45 minutes.
Meanwhile, peel the onion, carrots and any parsnip and trim the celery stalks. Dice 1 carrot and 1 celery stalk into 1/3 inch cubes and chop the rest into large chunks. Dice enough of the onion into 1/3 inch cubes to yield 6 Tbsp (3/8 cup) and enough of the parsnip (if any) to yield a ¼ cup. Coarsely chop the remaining onion and parsnip.
Remove the chicken from the broth and let cool. Add the roughly chopped vegetables to the broth along with the parsley sprigs and any chicken skin and bones. Bring to a boil and simmer for 40 minutes. Strain the broth and return it to the rinsed pot. If the chicken skin rendered a lot of fat into the broth, skim it off carefully with a ladle.
Bring a small pot of salted water to a boil and break the fettuccine into 1.5-inch pieces before adding them to the boiling water. Add the neatly diced vegetables to the broth and simmer until the vegetables are tender, about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, tear the chicken breast into bite-sized pieces with your hands and chop the dill. When the pasta is cooked, drain it in a colander and cool it under cold running water. When the vegetables are done, remove the broth from the heat and add the chicken and pasta. Taste for salt and add as needed. Stir in the dill and serve immediately.
You can reheat any leftover chicken noodle soup on the stove or in the microwave. You’ll lose the carefully choreographed doneness of the ingredients and everything will be a bit overcooked, but it will still be a tremendously satisfying soup.
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