When you think about “homemade” it is hard to not to think about some good ole homemade chicken soup.  I have made chicken soup from scratch but normally cut some corners by using some precooked chicken and skipping the whole chicken stock process.  This time I decided to do things closer to “how my grandma would make it”.

Homemade Chicken Stock Recipe

Ingredients

• 4-5 lbs of chicken breasts (skin on)
• 6 cups of water
• 1 large onion (peeled and cut in half)
• 3 bay leaves
• 12 whole black peppercorns
• 1 celery stock broken in half (3 stalks set aside)
• 1/2 lb of baby carrots
• 3 cloves of garlic (chopped)
• chicken bouillon powder or concentrate to make 6 cups of chicken broth (about 1/4 cup chicken bouillon powder)

Directions

• Add chicken to pot and fill with water to just cover chicken
• Cook over high heat to bring water to boil, reduce heat and cover then simmer for 30 minutes
• Skim off and fat floating on top (with chicken breasts there shouldn’t be too much here)
• Place remaining ingredients into pot and simmer for 1 hour

• Strain solids and dispose everything but chicken which when cool enough to handle cut into bite size pieces

 

Homemade White Chicken Soup Recipe

Ingredients

• Homemade chicken stock (see above)
• 1/2 pound baby carrots (sliced)
• 3 stalks celery (halved and sliced)
• 1 tsp chopped parsley
• Cooked chicken (chopped in bite size pieces)
• Wide egg noodles

Directions

• Return stock back to pot and add carrots and celery to pot.   Bring to boil then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.

• Add the chicken and parsley to the pot and serve over cooked egg noodles.

Note: You can also add the uncooked at the same time as chicken/parsley and boil for 10 minutes (or until noodles are soft) though this is way to much for our family to eat in 1-2 sittings so we normally freeze about 2/3 of this for a few easy meals later.