Confessions of Jersey Girl

What you’ll need:

4 – 5 bone in chicken breasts or on whole chicken ( prefer white chicken, but if you’re a dark girl, use six or seven bone in thighs)

Carrots

Onion

Garlic (I used 4 or 5 cloves, but use less if you’re not a fan.)

Celery (I personally HATE celery, but trust me on this.  Just put it in.  It comes out later)

Two cartons of chicken stock.

Herbox chicken boullion

Your favorite pasta (I like Pennsylvania Dutch Egg Noodles, but they were out of them at the store, so I used Dittalini)

Now, the process.

Put some olive oil in a pot on MEDIUM.  NOT HIGH.  Jesus.  This is how people screw shit up.  MEDIUM.

Chop up an onion and toss it in with a generous pinch of sea salt.  Salt helps the onions sweat out and well, it’s just what you do when you’re cooking onion.

Chop up some celery.  This was about three large stalks.  Leafy tops too!  They are good for you and make the soup look pretty.

Chop up your carrots.  This is three HUGE carrots.  Cut them a little larger then you think you should because they cook up and get mushy… you don’t want them to disintegrate.

Get yourself some garlic cloves.

Give each clove a good hard whack with the flat of your knife and pull the skins off.

Everybody into the pot!

Or, if you’re me… two pots.  This recipe makes a LOT of soup.  Either use your biggest pot, two pots of half it. I split it into two pots (and eventually three) because I was making enough for three families.  The good news is, it’s just as easy to make this for an army as it is for two people.

Let it all cook together for five or ten minutes.

You know I don’t cook without wine.  This happens to be a lovely pinot grigio.  After you pour yourself a nice big glass, splash a good cup or so of it  into the pot.  Cook everything together for another fiveish minutes just to cook the alcohol out of the wine so it doesn’t have a bitter after taste.

Put your chicken in the pot.  I split it up, 3 pieces in one and 2 in the other.

Dump in two cartons of chicken stock.  If you’re using two different pots like I am, use less in one if it’s smaller and just put one full carton of stock in each if they are the same size.  Either way, two cartons.

Mmmmm.

Fill the pots the rest of the way up with water and turn the heat up to medium high.  DO NOT WALK AWAY FROM THE POTS.  I’m kidding.  You can walk away, just keep an eye on them.  I left Matt home one time to watch my soup and he forgot about it and it boiled over everywhere.  It’s a bitch to clean up.  DO NOT PULL A MATT.  Remember you have soup on the stove.

Once it comes to a boil, turn it down to like, medium low and walk away.  Really.  Give it a good stir once, cover it up and go get yourself a snack.  You’ve worked hard to get to this point.

Like this.  YUM.

The soup can simmer for an hour, an hour and a half or whatever.  No rush.  I usually cook mine for an hour and a half. You could also make this in the slow cooker by using two chicken breasts, one carton of stock and half the veggies then setting it to low for 6 or 8 hours.

After an hour and a half, take out the chicken and put it in a bowl to cool off.

I scoop out all of the veggies too because I don’t like them.  I cut up a few carrots though and tossed fresh ones into the pot because my family likes carrots in their soup.  I do not like cooked veggies.  NOT A FAN.  So yeah.  I’m weird and this is what I do.  The new carrots will cook perfectly with the pasta you’ll add in a few mintues, so go ahead and toss them into the hot broth.

I probably added four or five heaping spoonfuls of this stuff to each pot.  Add two or three, taste it.  Add one more, taste it.  Keep going until it tastes extra super yummy to you.  I can’t tell you what to add since everyone is different.  But I can say that you’d probably benefit from at least two spoonfuls.  Turn your pot of broth and carrots up to medium high right now while you tend to the chicken.

Pull the skin off the chicken, and remove it all from the bones and shread it up into bite size chunks.  Toss it all into the pot when you’re done and turn the heat back down to medium-ish.  Add your pasta and cook for ten minutes.  I added about a half pound per box.  Use your judgement and remember that pasta plumps up!  Don’t add too much or you won’t have enough broth left for soup!

After about ten minutes, dish it up!

ENJOY!  :)

Ps.  It freezes super crazy well.  If you make a ton, just add the pasta to what you’re going to eat now and freeze the rest of the chicken and stock in a ziploc bag for later.  Pasta doesn’t freeze too well, it gets mushy.