Chicken Noodle Soup with Homemade Noodles
Noodles are good in winter and summer alike! That’s what people said in Kyivan Rus’ a couple of centuries ago. For some reason pasta products such as vermicelli, spaghetti and noodles are considered to be from Italy, where they all go under the name pasta, which means “dough”. In fact, dried dough products came to Europe from Asia not so long ago, in the days of Marco Polo’s travels. Though boiled-dough dishes exist almost everywhere, for example Ukrainian halushky.
The abundance of pasta shapes is simply amazing. Long and short, straight and fancy, sometimes in shapes so elaborate they are hard to describe in words. The most familiar shape, and the easiest to repeat when cooking at home, is long, thin, narrow ribbons. The general name is noodles. Noodles are made from flour and water. Sometimes egg or egg powder is added. Homemade noodles aren’t hard to make, but you have to follow certain rules. The most important thing is a “firm” dough. If you don’t keep to the recipe and the dough turns out too soft or sticky, you can throw the noodles away without regret. For noodles with meat, as with any pasta, it’s better to buy good quality.
Usually, after spoiling noodles a few times, people develop a conditioned reflex, and the noodles come out right. By the way, if you plan to make the wonderful Italian pasta carbonara and can make your own noodles, you are a lucky person, because no store-bought pasta compares with homemade. In the East, especially in Southeast Asia, noodle dishes are a national pride. Watching Chinese or Japanese films, you can often recognize famous dishes like ramen (Japanese wheat noodles) or udon (a type of Japanese noodle), while the translator simply says “noodles”. Well, that’s easier for the viewer.
Noodles make an excellent first course: noodle soup. We love chicken soups with tiny filini vermicelli. But sometimes we choose long noodles such as tagliatelle, pappardelle, fettuccine, or ordinary spaghetti.
Ingredients
2 servings
- Chicken legs 1-2
- Noodles 100 g
- Carrot 1
- Onion (small) 50 g
- Potato 1
- Parsley root, fresh parsley, garlic to taste
- Salt, black pepper, dried herbs, bay leaf to taste
Step-by-step recipe
Noodles are a favorite of all kinds of fast food and “just add hot water from the kettle” options. Interesting fact: instant noodles are called “Doshirak” in some countries, and “Mivina” here. Both are usually local idioms for the same thing. But real noodle soup is incomparable!
There is a lot of debate about where the word for “noodles” (lapsha) comes from. The most credible version is that it comes from the Old Church Slavonic verb “lakati”, meaning to lap, “the way dogs eat”, slurping with the tongue. You can easily check this by trying to eat a long, scalding-hot strand of noodle. There is no way to do it other than slurping it in.
So, we cook the soup in chicken broth with vegetables.
Bring 1.5 l of water to a boil and cook a broth from the chicken legs in it. Add 1-2 bay leaves and a little salt to the broth.
Simmer the broth for 10 mins, then remove the bay leaves. Cook for another 20 mins. Take out the cooked chicken legs and tear the meat into small pieces. If the broth isn’t quite clear, it’s worth clarifying. There are many ways to do it, but the easiest is to pour the well-beaten whites of 1-2 eggs into the slightly cooled broth, bring almost to a boil and strain.
Peel the carrot and parsley root and cut them into matchsticks. By the way, this way of cutting vegetables is called “julienne”. It’s usually used for salads and soups and comes from French cuisine. In everyday speech any matchstick cut is called “julienne”, supposedly after the summer month of July, julienne.
Peel the garlic and leave the cloves whole. Cut the potato into small cubes or sticks.
It’s best to use the smallest onions so you don’t have to cut them. That way the onion won’t overcook and falls apart less, staying whole.
Add the chicken pieces and all the vegetables to the boiling chicken broth at the same time, add pepper and 1-2 pinches of dried aromatic herbs.
Simmer the soup over low heat for 15 minutes after it comes to a boil.
Add the noodles to the broth and, without stirring, cook at a gentle simmer until done. By the way, you can easily make homemade noodles for the soup yourself.
Sprinkle with finely chopped fresh parsley.
Calories and macros
485 kcal
Serving ≈ 920 g
- Protein25 g22% of kcal
- Fat18 g35% of kcal
- Carbs51 g44% of kcal
100 g53 kcalProtein 2.7 gFat 1.9 gCarbs 5.5 g
Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.
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