Easy Chicken Noodle Soup

There are times when, as a last resort, we do buy takeaway. I refuse to spend in excess of $40 for hamburgers (you know the ones I mean) that taste and look terrible or a pizza that tastes like it could’ve been cooked on a cardboard base. My ‘go to’ takeaway meal is a roasted, rotisserie chicken from the supermarket because I know I can get at least 3 meals from it including this easy Chicken Noodle Soup.

Make your own stock

You may remember the homemade chicken stock I made recently? This the last meal I can get from my roast chicken. I can make a roast chicken dinner, chicken and salad, chicken pies, chicken sandwiches or rolls, a chicken pasta dish or many other things from the roast chicken. Once the meat has been used, I make a chicken stock from the carcass. The stock be either frozen and used in many other dishes or made into a homemade chicken soup.

Add a few vegetables like an onion, carrot and celery, a few fresh or dried herbs and water to the chicken carcass, that’s basically your soup made. It’s so full of flavour and tastes nothing like a ready made stock.

All you need to do is return the stock to the stove.  Add any leftover chicken meat, frozen or fresh chopped vegetables, any kind of pasta you like (I used spaghetti pasta). Heat until the pasta is cooked. That’s it! 

If you don’t have access to freshly made stock, you can always use chicken stock cubes or powder.  Ready made liquid chicken stock is also good but I don’t like paying for water. It pays to have these things in the pantry to curb last minute takeaway temptations. Served with bread, this meal will fill hungry tummies.

Make chicken stock from a rotisserie chicken

I’m not the kind of person who usually slaves over a hot stove making my own stocks but I do love the flavour of homemade stock. It is so easy to make your own chicken stock from a rotisserie chicken and here’s how.

There’s not usually much leftover from a store bought supermarket chicken. I can usually get about 3 or 4 meals from just one chicken. When it gets to this stage, I know it’s ready to be made into stock.

I remove any meat left and save it for sandwiches, pies, a mornay sauce or soup and remove any seasoning (stuffing).

Recipe

Into a saucepan I cover the carcass with water and add a large chopped carrot, an onion (no need to remove the skin), celery (if I have it), dried herbs like thyme and salt and pepper.

Boil for about 15 to 20 minutes and strain into a sieve ensuring you have a bowl to catch all the stock. You can also do this in the slow cooker on low for about 2 hours. (Don’t worry. I’ve strained the stock straight over the sink a couple times right down the drain.)

Your stock is now ready to be used for any dish. It’s that easy. You can put 1 cup quantities in a ziplock bag and freeze for dishes down the track. Freeze into ice cube trays or the whole lot into a freezable container. I was planning soup for this lot so I kept it in the fridge until the next day when I made soup. Homemade stock has such a wonderful, deep, rich flavour. I normally use stock powder but there really is no comparison. You should give it a try sometime.