Homemade egg noodles, plump and toothsome, soaking in a comforting broth flavored with roast chicken, carrots, celery, onion & garlic. It's sit-on-the-couch-with-a-warm-bowl-of-it-in-your-hands-and-your-feet-kicked-up, kind of casual. That kind of relaxed. In fact, fresh chopped parsley and cracked pepper is as close to frivolous as this soup gets. Just the kind of nourishment you need on a cool fall day.
Just the thing Grandma would make.
Grandma could cook anything with nothing, it seemed. I'm not sure how she did it, but she was always able to "scare somethin' up" for dinner in her kitchen. I wanted to be like that, and I knew a good place to start was with her egg noodle recipe, so I copied it down years ago before I left home.
This isn't a fussy recipe; it's a simple one, like Grandma. And, I love how it's written.
Egg Noodles
1 cup flour
1 egg
water in eggshell
salt
That's it. No directions, so measurement for the salt, and I don't think it could get any better than "water in eggshell," could it?
I have to be honest, here, and let you know that I'm a little nervous about posting a recipe. I'm nervous because I, too, tend to be a salt-with-no-measurement and a water-in-eggshell kind of cook, myself, and I know that's not how most recipe writers write recipes! But, if you're okay with coming into my kitchen, sitting on a stool, and watching the process, nonetheless, I'd love to have you.
If you have some left-over roast chicken from last night's dinner, you have the beginnings of a good pot of soup. Throw the chicken--bones, skin, meat and all--into a stockpot of water. I'm thinking that my stockpot is a 4 quart, and that I probably put in about 3 quarts of water. My precise measurement on this? Fill it to just below the rivets.
The trick with the chicken, here, is to bring it to a boil, turn the heat down and simmer it for just a few minutes. You don't want to cook it to death, because it's already cooked to death. Well, not really, I hope, but you get the idea. If you over-simmer cooked chicken, it will become rubbery, and we're not trying to make Rubber Chicken Noodle Soup. What you want to do, is warm the chicken so the meat will be easier to remove from the bone, and in the process of heating the chicken in the water, you are getting some of that good chicken flavor from the bones and skin. There you go, homemade stock.
Celery has such a subtle, but wonderful flavor, and it's a must in this soup. One trick I learned about celery, is that it lasts forever in the frig, and even when you think it's lost all its crispness and is too far gone for any edible purpose, take the limpy bunch of it, trim the bottom ends off, and put it in a pitcher of water, just like you would a bouquet of flowers. It will be so thankful for the drink and, in a while, you will have firm, crisp celery once again.
Chop up the classics: celery, carrot, onion, and garlic. I actually used twice as much celery and carrots as this photo shows. But, that's okay. Have you figured out precision is not my game when it comes to chicken noodle?
Before you add the chopped veggies to the stockpot, remove the chicken to a plate for de-boning after it cools. Sometimes I saute the garlic and onion in olive oil before I add them to the pot, but not today. I just dumped everything in raw.
Bring the stock up to a boil, turn the heat down to a simmer, and put the lid on if you want to (a little secret: if you think you may have added too much water to start with, go ahead and leave the lid off and let some of it evaporate away). Now, let the veggies roll around in their hot bath until they become tender.
Meanwhile, you can start on the egg noodles.
These noodles are in such high demand around our dinner table, that for a pot of soup this size, I double the original recipe. So, into a bowl goes 2 cups of flour and about 3/4 teaspoon of salt. Stir together and set aside.
Into a small bowl, crack two eggs, beat them, then stir them together with...(I love this part)...
...two eggshell halves full of cold water! The amazing thing is, no matter how the egg cracks, an eggshell-full is always the right amount!
Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture, and stir it together with a fork until it comes together to form a soft, lumpy dough.
Turn the lumpy dough out onto your floured countertop, and knead a few turns to incorporate all the ingredients and smooth it out.
Roll the dough out fairly thin, because it plumps up nicely in the hot broth.
With a sharp knife, slice the dough into noodle-size strips.
Making sure your broth is at a gentle boil, drop the noodles into the pot one at a time to ensure that they don't cling together as they cook.
You'll know they're done when they float up to the top. It won't take long at all. Oh, and please, please don't overcook the noodles! They MUST be toothsome!
To your stockpot, add the de-boned, chopped up chicken, along with...
...some fresh parsley, washed
and chopped.
Give the soup a good stir around, season with salt & pepper, then reach for a bowl and ladle.
Now, I'm going to be bold. Very bold, in fact. I'm going to say that you may...well, before you take your first bite, you may need to prepare yourself. Because these could be the best noodles you've ever had.
That is, unless you have your grandma's recipe.
