Chicken Noodle Soup

Chicken noodle soup is one of those things that you’re supposed to have when you’re sick. I have it when I have next to nothing in the fridge and any old left over thrown in. I can’t even begin to describe the gzillion variations of chicken noodle soup out there. But I suppose the basic ingredients would be chicken (of course), noodle (of course) and any old vegetables.

So I start with chicken frame I always have in the freezer. One thing I love about buying chicken breast at fresh market here in Singapore is that it comes with bones. How awesome is that! Who would have thought chickens are supposed to have bones! I hate that whole ‘let’s sanitise your food and have it on neat little trays so you never knew it came from dead animals’ thing. Come on. So I usually take out a sharp knife, take the breast meat off, use it in whatever and I chuck the leftover frame in the freezer for days like this (days like this being days I’m starving and have nothing to eat and too lazy to walk to the supermarket).

I like the idea of using leftover roast chicken bones to make soup. If you have one of those supermarket barbecued chickens, save the bones and skins and the icky bits you don’t eat for the soup. Chuck them in the freezer. So since I have no roast chicken bones (frankly I really don’t like supermarket roast – the stuffing is icky), I decided to roast the frames I have anyway. So on go the chicken frames on a baking tray, drizzled with olive oil, salt, pepper and some steak seasoning (that I randomly found in the cupboard).I roasted them on high heat for about 20 minutes. The toaster oven Yen has works wonders. Who says you need an oven.

Meanwhile, chop some onions and carrot (or rather half an onion and a carrot, serves me) and slowly fry it in a bit of butter (not too much, I ended up putting too much butter here and had to skim it out). I put in a bit of Thai basil – but that’s cos it’s the only pot of herb I have. I should probably add to my herb collection but I just moved here damnit, it takes time – and where does one get herbs like basil, thyme, sage and rosemary from? I mean live plants. I don’t want herb packets. But anyway from there, take a look at your vegetable inventory. Here I’m using long beans and cabbage. You can add pretty much anything: pumpkin, broccoli, parsnip, bok choy, whatever. It is a great recipe to get rid of the veggies that may be past their best.

Add your chicken frame that has been browned to the pot and add water. Add the rest of your vegetables and bring to boil. Here I generally cheat and add a chicken stock cube instead of salt. Cover with boiling water and then simmer on low heat for about 15 minutes. About ten minutes in, I usually add a handful of pasta. Any pasta will do. The idea is to use any left over broken pasta that you can’t really do much with.

So after your soup has been simmering for a while, fish out the chicken frame. Because my butchering skill is pretty subpar, there’s decent amount of meat left on it. I usually pick out the rest of the meat that’s on the frame and add it back to the soup.
That’s it. Perfect for the uber lazy.