Hearty Chicken Noodle Soup! (CCTC p. 28)

So the first recipe I decided to make for my "Bubbling Cauldron" blog is out of America's Test Kitchen's "The Complete Cooking for Two Cookbook". I bought this book last year and think it's fantastic, though I've only made a couple of recipes from the book so far. For the first recipe posting on my blog, I thought it would be most appropriate to cook the very first recipe listed in the book: Hearty Chicken Noodle Soup (p. 28). It seemed like a pretty basic recipe, and I already had a few of the ingredients on hand, and I just popped over to Whole Foods to buy whatever I was missing.

The Process: The hardest part of following this recipe was chopping up the onion, celery, carrot and parsley, and shredding the chicken, so overall it's a pretty easy recipe. I could have made things even easier for myself by preparing all the ingredients ahead of time, including making the chicken broth, but I didn't do that, so I was multi-tasking a bit more than necessary once I started, but it was manageable. From start to finish, the whole process took close to an hour. 

The Verdict: This is VERY good chicken noodle soup. Some of the best I've ever tasted. I give it a 9/10, with my only quibble being a very, very faint oily undertone to the flavor of the soup. I will try a different oil next time, to see whether that makes any difference. This is also a VERY hearty soup -- proportionally speaking there's a lot of chicken in there! I would say this would make a substantive starter for 2 or 3 people, or a full-on meal for 1 person (as it was for me tonight).

The Cost: $5.72 (Chicken $3.94 + Onion $.30 + Celery $.25 + Carrot $.33 + Broth $.30 + Noodles $.20 + Parsley $.40, plus negligible amounts of salt, pepper, thyme, flour, bay leaf, oil). 

Seasoning the bone-in split chicken breast with salt & pepper.

Just a smidge over the 12 oz bone-in split chicken breast called
for in the recipe. It was awesome that I could just go to the
butcher counter at Whole Foods and ask for exactly the amount
I needed, and pay even less per pound for it then the pre-
packaged options, all of which were too big anyway.

Browning the skin side of the chicken in vegetable oil (I used
canola oil this time, will try a different oil next time). The recipe
called for doing this over medium-high heat, but that just
seemed a bit too high with my stove and cookware, so I did this
over medium heat.

The nicely browned chicken (only brown on the skin side),
set aside for a moment.

Chopping up the onion.

Chopping up the celery.

Chopping up the carrot.

Adding the chopped onion, celery & carrot to the remaining fat in the saucepan.

The onion, celery & carrot, after softening in the fat over medium heat.

I used organic "Better than Bouillon" reduced sodium chicken
base to create the 3 cups of chicken broth called for in the recipe.

Here I have added thyme, flour, the browned chicken and a bay
leaf to the mix, and brought it all to a simmer.

Verifying that the internal temperature of the chicken has reached 160F.

Transferring the cooked chicken to a cutting board.

Shredding the cooked chicken into bite-size pieces.

All the white meat has been separated from the skin & bones
and broken up into bite-size pieces.

The chicken meat ready to be added back to the soup.

Washing & drying fresh parsley.

Adding wide egg noodles to the soup.

After separating the parsley leaves from the stems.

Mincing the parsley.

The noodles are cooked and the soup is just about done -- just
need to add back in the chicken and the parsley.

Adding the chicken meat back to the soup.

Mixing the chicken meat into the soup and giving it couple of
minutes to heat back up.

Adding the parsley to the soup.

Final mix of all ingredients.

Finished product -- a very hearty chicken noodle soup.