Sunday, October 21, 2012

Sunday Funday, Pt. 1

Now that Fall is here, my drive to make fabulous home cooked meals has kicked in.  Anything that spells comfort is what I'm looking for.  Cold and rainy day? Why, bundle on up and grab a plate.  That is what I'm going for here people!

Today, I made my first pinterest-found recipe: Chicken Noodle Soup.  Found here: Homestyle Chicken Noodle Soup

The actual title on the recipe is listed as such " Homestyle Chicken Noodle Soup- so easy a monkey could do it!! "  No joke, eh?  Well sign me up!


-1/2 Onion, chopped
-1 bag egg noodles
-2 or 3 cans cooked chunk chicken, drained
-1 or 2 cans sliced carrots, drained
-Bunch of celery, chopped (added by me, not in original recipe)
-Chicken bouillon cubes
-Water
-Parsley flakes, salt and pepper to taste, maybe some garlic pepper.  Get fancy!
-Olive oil

(Finely chop that onion, I just kinda haphazardly threw the knife at it and ended up with far too many stringy or long pieces.  Also, I bought 2 bags of egg noodles but definitely only needed one.  I didn't think I had enough with just one bag so I added 1/2 of the second.  WRONG!  Hubs and I both agreed we had too many noodles and not enough chicken.  {I made it in a very large pot and the chicken was drowned out by all those damn noodles.} )

 

Add some olive oil to the bottom of your pot to saute the onions.  I also generously added garlic pepper and Mrs. Dash Table Blend for flavoring.  Once those bad boys are nice and loosey-goosey, fill the pot with hot water 2/3 of the way full, add the bullion cubes (I added 4 at this point), and boil!


Boiling? Check!  Add them egg noodles, bitches! Recipe called for 12-15 minutes boiling time.


While the noodles were boiling I opened the cans of carrots and dumped them into a colander to drain.  I then chopped up enough celery until my brain said "OK lady,... that's enough foolin' around".  I threw that on top of the carrots so everything was in one contained place and my cutting board was free, justincase!


Once the noodles were ready, I taste-tested the broth since the original recipe told me too.  Again, since my pot was larger I felt my broth was a little watery so I threw in one more bouillon cube.  Delicioso! I added the veggies and then opened and drained my cans of chicken into the same colander and then added that to the pot as well.



Simmer for 10 minutes, and BAM you got So-Easy-A-Monkey-Could-Do-It-Chicken-Noodle-Soup!  I added some more garlic pepper and some Lawry's Seasoning Salt.  OH, and parsley flakes.  Original recipe basically threatened you if you didn't use them and called into question how un-American you were... I didn't want to get shanked so in the went!


This was delicious!  I warmed some Hawaiian's King rolls to go with it.  Those buttery little bastards dipped in the soup?  OM NOM NOM...  Even the hubs was vocal about liking it!  Normally even if he likes something I get a very short "yeah, you did good hunny" or "you didn't do too terrible".

I followed the recipe almost exactly.  To me, chicken noodle soup always has carrots and celery so I added them in.  I felt they could have been cooked a bit longer to make them not so crisp and crunchy.  I like 'em soggy just like the carrots!  Also, I went a bit over board on the noodles which over-shadowed the chicken.

I just paused to clean up and my big ass pot was 8 quarts!  Wayyyyy to much for just us two.  We could have done with probably 1/2 that amount and still have a shit ton left over.

All in all, I will be making this many more times in our future!  Plus it really was so easy a monkey could do it.  The hardest part was sauteing the onion.  Not even kiddng.