Roast Chicken becomes Chicken Noodle Soup

I made the lovely Chicken with Two Lemons again this weekend.  It's so easy, and delicious.  I served it with a simple green salad with a homemade dressing (whisk together mayo, apple cider vinegar, lemon pepper, salt, chopped chives), green beans and a parmesan risotto.

Tasty...

 

 

Here's the order of operations...

Make the chicken...while it is in the oven, you can rinse and prep the beans, clean and chop your lettuce, make your salad dressing and get it in the fridge, chop shallots and garlic and grate some parmesan cheese (for the risotto).  Have a glass of wine too!

When the chicken has about 30 minutes left, then you can start really cooking.


Green Beans Part 1

Boil water and add green beans (cleaned and broken into whatever size pieces you like).  Boil until the beans are slightly tender, but still pretty crunchy.  The trick is that you don't want to cook them all the way at this point.  Drain the beans and set aside for later.


Risotto  (Start this when your chicken has about 15 minutes left)

Heat 2 Tbs of butter over medium heat.  Add 1/4 cup finely chopped shallots and 3 cloves of garlic, minced.  Cook them until they are nice and soft.  Add 1 cup of Arbrorio rice and toast for a couple minutes until it gets a bit of color.  Why Arbrorio?  Because it has a high starch content and that starch makes risotto creamy.  Then add 1 cup of chicken broth (or a buttery white wine) and heat until the liquid is fully absorbed.  Don't stir too much because it can get gummy.  Add a second cup of broth (broth this time...2 cups of wine would be too much) and heat until it's been absorbed, and then do the same with a third cup.  Add 1/4 cup of grated parmesan and salt & pepper to taste. 

Now it should be time to take the chicken out and let it rest.  While it is resting, you can finish up the green beans and toss the salad.


Green Beans Part 2

You can use the risotto pan for this step.  Heat 1 Tbs of butter in the pan.  Add a clove of minced garlic and cook until soft.  Add the green beans and toss to coat in the butter.  Season with salt & pepper and fresh herbs are great (basil, tarragon, parsley, etc...).  You don't have to cook these long, just until they are tender.  We like them with still a bit of bite to them.

Now it should be time to carve up that chicken.  The risotto may cool slightly, but this approach works and it saves pots and pans. 

Did you see that bowl of green beans?  One of the boys went green bean crazy and polished it off.  Amazing.


We ate the breast and drumsticks Saturday night, and saved the rest for soup.  The chicken was an $18 organic, free-range, "happy" chicken.  That's quite expensive when you could by a whole, roasted chicken at the grocery store for $7.  By making more meals out of it, it feels better...more frugal.


Chicken Noodle Soup

First, we boiled the chicken in a stock pot for about a half hour.  My guy was sweet and helped make this soup, since I'd never done it before.  I'd had homemade turkey noodle once (or twice?) and it was disgusting.  Why was it disgusting?  I seem to remember that the whole thing was bland and that the turkey bits were sort of slimy.  This whole process made me nervous. 



After the chicken had boiled, we cooled the bird and my guy pulled all the meat from the bones.

While he did that, I made noodles. 


Egg Noodles

2 cups of all-purpose flour
1 whole egg
2 egg yolks
2 tsp salt
1/3 cup water (more or less)

Combine the flour and salt in a bowl.  Make a well in the middle of the flour and add the whole egg and two egg yolks (you'll need to crack them over a second bowl to catch the whites and inevitable shell fragments).  Mix the flour and eggs together.  Add water (just a little bit at a time) until the flour mixture comes together into a ball.  Transfer the dough to a floured surface and knead until it is smooth (and not sticky).  Let it rest for a few minutes (you can use the time to chop up your soup veg).  Divide into four pieces and roll out into thin sheets.  Make sure you've floured everything well, so the dough isn't sticky.  Then, roll the dough up like you're rolling up a newspaper to make a big spiral of dough.  Slice the roll of dough into smaller rolls (so you're slicing width-wise...if you were cutting up a hot dog, you'd be cutting it into small rounds).  Unroll the rolls of dough and you have noodles! 

I laid the noodles flat on a cookie sheet and dusted with more flour to prevent sticking.  We finished the soup by cooking 3 cloves of minced garlic, chopped celery (3 ribs), chopped carrots (3 carrots), and chopped parsnips (1 big parsnip) in a couple Tbs of butter to get them slightly softened.  We added the chicken meat, 2 Tbs of thyme, some roughly chopped celery leaves, and two quarts of chicken stock.  Everything simmered until the vegetables were soft.  We added some pepper (the soup was salty enough) and a bit of chardonnay (about a half cup).  When everything seemed really well-flavored, we added the noodles and brought the pot to a boil for 3 minutes.  Fresh noodles cook so quickly. 

(Can I just add that I love parsnips?  So underrated.  Apparently they get sweeter after winter frost and make a good addition to a winter garden, but the leaves can cause a chemical burn like poison ivy.) 

The soup was so delicious.  And - we got two dinners out of that soup- so our $18 chicken ended up generating three beautiful dinners for four.  Not too bad, right?