Chicken Noodle Soup

Cool weather is here and it seems like it is here to stay. 

One of the things I love about cold weather is soup. 

I love soup and Ray will eat it when it is cold out...so win/win. 

One of the most popular soups out there is Chicken Noodle Soup.
 For some it brings back childhood memories. 

It is the go to soup when you have a cold or don't feel good.

Now while this is a very popular soup, I have only made it a couple of times in the many years that I've been married.  The main reason is because I can not stand mushy, overcooked noodles or pasta of any kind.  Pasta needs to be el dente!  It seemed that the longer the noodles would sit in the broth, the more they became over cooked.  Another problem that I noticed recently at an event that had this soup, they had added extra pasta while it was cooking which in turn added so much starch to the water that I thought they had actually put flour in the soup in an attempt to make it cream of noodle soup.  Anyways, I knew there had to be a way around the mushy noodles.  Now maybe you already knew the solution but I didn't.

So last night I decided to conquer this problem.

I started off with my chicken.  I used boneless, skinless chicken and I diced it up as small as I could.  I have found that if the chicken is partially frozen it makes it a lot easier to cut.  Then I put the chicken with a little olive oil in the bottom of my large pot and sautéed it until the chicken was no longer pink. 

To this I added diced up onion, celery, carrots, and lots of garlic.  Sautéing slightly until veggies begin to soften.  Now if you are using a strong onion you want to make sure and cook it pretty good so that it doesn't over power your soup.  I didn't have chicken broth so I used several bouillon cubes and water. 

For seasoning I used black pepper, hot sauce, oregano, a touch of onion powder (my onion was not strong), garlic powder, and a touch of steak seasoning for an extra zing.   I allowed this to simmer for some time.

Instead of adding the uncooked noodles directly to the soup, I cooked them in a separate pot of boiling water with a bouillon cube for about 2 minutes, no longer.  This started the cooking process.  Then immediately drained the pasta and completely rinsed it in cold water...this stops the cooking process.  Right before serving, I put the noodles in the soup and stirred it.   I used the medium Egg Noodles, by the way.

Perfection!!! 

 

The noodles were the perfect consistency and the soup was full of flavor.  We both ate seconds last night.  When I heated the leftovers today for lunch, the noodles were still good and not mushy.  
 

Yes!  I finally found a way to make this work. 

So, I had to share.