Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

You will need these ingredients, plus a whole chicken and of course salt & pepper. Optional ingredients include garlic powder and onion powder. If you have them in your pantry, great, if not, don't sweat it!

Nothing warms you up like homemade chicken noodle soup on a cold day.

Put a thawed, whole chicken in a big pot. Fill the pot with warm water, you want the water to cover the chicken by an inch or two, add a couple of tablespoons of salt. Set your burner to high, and boil the chicken for about 50 minutes. Once the chicken is done, carefully pull the chicken out using two utensils at both ends. Pull some of the chicken apart to reveal the inside so it can cool throughout.

Don't discard the water you boiled the chicken in, it is now chicken broth and nothing is like homemade chicken broth. Remove the pot from the burner until the chicken is cooled, and once you start shredding the chicken, put the pot back on the burner and set it to high, let the broth boil and add your noodles. Let the noodles boil for 5 minutes and turn the burner to low.

Now it's time to add your seasonings, add your salt, celery salt, fresh cracked black pepper, onion powder, garlic powder and dill weed. Stir it all up and let the flavors marry.

Anyway, after you have removed ALL the meat from the bone, it should look like this.

Now you have a pile of all different sizes of chicken, white meat and dark meat. Don't, I repeat DON'T disregard the dark meat. I do not understand people who don't eat dark meat because it's "fatty," hello people it's chicken we're eating here not a pork rump roast. Chicken is one of the leanest meats you can eat. Kind of reminds me of people who go to a nice steak house and order a steak well done. Not true meat connoisseur.

You can either tear the chicken into bite sized pieces or cut them with a knife. I'm a tearer, I like it rustic.

After your meat is in bite sized pieces, dump ALL of it into the pot with the seasoned broth and noodles. Pop the lid on and cook on low for a few hours, stirring every 30 minutes or so.

Serve with some saltines and enjoy.

*This makes a lot of soup, freeze leftovers for the next time it gets really cold outside.

Ingredients:

One whole chicken, raw and thawed, innards removed

2 tablespoons dill weed

3 tablespoons salt

3 tablespoons fresh cracked black pepper

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1/2 teaspoon onion powder

2 tablespoons celery salt (don't substitute with regular salt)

4 12 oz bags of Reams frozen egg noodles (or two of the bigger bags)