Good for What Ails You

Note: If you’re joining me from the Ultimate Recipe Swap at Life as Mom, Welcome! So glad you stopped by! If you like what you see here in this post, check out my “Fall Fest 2010” celebration with lots of great recipes, tips and other fun things to celebrate autumn.

Cold and flu season have hit our home a little early this year. I’ve been knocked out practically for two days now with some serious head congestion that causes a raging headache. Imagine combining that lovely feeling with the need to keep going, if only to keep up with a very fast almost-two-year-old (who, by the way, had this cold, too, but for far shorter and far less severely!). Yeah, it’s been fun around here.

Consequently, I’ve been craving chicken noodle soup. Last night I sufficed the craving with a can  (shameful, I know, but hey, it’s cheap this time of year!) because I didn’t have the energy to make it myself. Today, however, I managed to drag myself into the kitchen to put all the ingredients in the slow cooker … before I went and took a nap! The nice slow cooker took over from there, and a delicious easy dinner was nearly ready at dinner time. All I had to do was add in the noodles, slice some crusty homemade bread and slice some fresh apples, too.

Bookmark this page and keep it handy, because trust me, at some point this fall and winter, you’re going to need it! Chicken noodle soup not only tastes great when you are feeling yucky; it also has healing properties. There’s some debate about exactly why it helps, but the fact remains that it does help, whatever the reason.

Thankfully, it’s blessedly easy, too, so you can, like me, even make it in the middle of a congested fog of the worst sort! Ignore those recipes (for this purpose at least) that call for a whole fryer or boiler chicken and lots of water. That will make some great chicken soup, but it’s too much work when you’re sick. All you really need is some broth, cooked chicken, veggies and noodles. Add a little seasoning and voila! Chicken Noodle Soup!

Let’s start with the broth. You can get it 3 different ways, starting with the cheapest:

*Homemade broth or stock. This is super cheap, made with leftover bones and veggie parts. I make some in the crock pot every couple weeks and store it in a pitcher in my fridge. I either use it within the two weeks or throw it out (doesn’t really matter; didn’t cost much to start with) and make a new batch with the bones and/or veggies I’ve collected in the meantime. This means I {almost} always have chicken broth on hand for recipes like this.

*Bouillion cubes, granules or base. This is certainly not the healthiest option, but it’s my emergency back-up plan. If I don’t have enough homemade stock for whatever recipe I’m using, I’ll supplement with this. If you don’t make a habit of having homemade stock around, this is your cheapest option.

*Canned or packaged ready broth. This is the most expensive option, and may or may not be healthy, depending on the brand. Generally speaking, the healthier it is, the more expensive it is. A lot of these have way too much sodium and most of them have MSG. If convenience wins out for you over nutrition and budget, then this is the option for you.

As for the chicken, I happened to have plenty of leftover cooked chicken thighs from dinner the other night that worked perfectly into my soup. Whenever chicken (either whole chickens or parts) go on sale for less than $1/lb, I buy a large package. Then, when I cook it up for dinner, I cook the entire package and save the extras in the freezer for nights like this. Sometimes I also incorporate the leftover chicken into my weekly menu, in which case there’s nothing left for the freezer, but in either case, it saves time in the end.

You can throw whatever veggies you have into your soup (I saw a recipe today that called for sweet potatoes and broccoli in the chicken noodle soup. Totally not my thing, but it proves my point!), but traditionally, carrots and celery are used. As for seasoning, keep it simple. Chicken noodle soup was not meant to be elaborate (it certainly can be, if you want it to, but it definitely stands alone in simplicity, too.).

As for noodles, my favorite would definitely be egg noodles – they go so well with this soup – but I have used pretty much every kind of pasta in chicken noodle soup. Case in point: today, I had no egg noodles. I was not about to go and buy them, because for one, I was totally not feeling up to that, and for another, that would completely violate all my principles about shopping once a week and using what I have on hand! So instead, I used some farfalle noodles from a package that had previously been opened. I used a total of 4 cups of uncooked pasta, but you can use as little as half that much. I like my soup noodly.

Sooo… here’s how my chicken noodle soup ended up today:

Chicken Noodle Soup for the Cold-Ridden Soul
8 cups chicken broth
2 cups chopped cooked chicken
4 medium carrots, peeled and sliced
3 celery stalks, chopped
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 TBSP dried rosemary
1 TBSP dried parsley
4 cups uncooked pasta
salt and pepper to taste

Place the broth, chicken, vegetables and herbs in the slow cooker and stir to mix. Cook on low for at least 4 hours, preferably 6. Before serving, cook noodles separately according to package directions. Drain and add to soup. Add salt and pepper to taste.

To make it a complete meal, I served it with hearty bread and apple wedges (an apple a day keeps the doctor away, right?). Of course, you can serve it on its own for a light meal or a lunch.

Whether it’s QUICK or not completely depends on the ingredients you’re starting with, i.e., if your chicken is already cooked and your broth is already made or not. As it turned out for me today, it was very quick; all I had to do was throw the ingredients in the slow cooker, and then make the noodles closer to dinner time. I would recommend that you remember to turn on the burner when you go to boil water for your noodles. Then dinner will be ready at the time you intended and not half an hour later. Just sayin’.

It’s very EASY, too. Despite the fact that most people eat it from a can (me included on occasion!), chicken noodle soup is really very easy to make from scratch. In fact, it was part of my “home ec” curriculum in high school!

It’s certainly CHEAP, especially with homemade broth and leftover chicken. It can start to get pricey if you have to use store-bought ingredients, so homemade is definitely the way to go.

As we’ve already established, it’s very HEALTHY. Nobody knows why for sure, but certainly chicken noodle soup helps you feel better when you’re under the weather.

Find more soup and stew recipes at:

Find more inspiring and informative posts at Make Your Own Monday, Motivational Monday, Homestead Barn Hop, The Bulletin Board, Better Mom Monday, Natural Living Monday, Trivium Tuesday, Titus 2sday, Teach Me Tuesday, Hip Homeschool Hop, Titus 2 Tuesday, Delicious Dishes, Open Call Tuesday, Tiny Tip Tuesday, Healthy 2Day Wednesday, Frugal Days Sustainable Ways, Works For Me Wednesday, Real Food Wednesday, Whole Food Wednesday, Allergy-Free Wednesday, The Mommy Club, Encourage One Another, Thought Provoking Thursday, Simple Lives Thursday, Homemaking Link Up, Keep it Real Thursday, Frugal Thursday Rewind, Your Green Resource, Homeschooling on the Cheap, Thrifty Thursday, Fellowship Friday, Fight Back Friday, I'm Lovin' It, Weekend Bloggy Reading, Weekend Whatever, Snacktime Saturday