- 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.
