Molly Makes Chicken Noodle Soup | From the Test Kitchen | Bon Appétit

It's hard like you have a friend behind the camera because you're like I won. I'm like talking to you today. I'm making a classic

chicken

noodle

soup

. bird in the pot and we're going to remove different parts of the bird as they finish cooking so no part of the meat is dry and overcooked at the end, that's what

makes

this recipe special and the key to full flavor Really delicious. the

chicken

noodle

soup

is obviously the broth, so we're going to spend a lot of time working on the broth to always start seasoning the chicken before it goes in. a couple of minutes to let the salt soak in and soak into the chicken so the meat itself is really seasoned and not just the broth we'll set it aside while the chicken sits for a few minutes and could do this up to 24 hours ahead , so it will actually be an amazing move on your part.

I just didn't do that. I am going to cut the aromatics that go into this broth so that they are two whole onions and you will notice that I am leaving the skin on. You don't need to do this if you're baffled, however, the golden hue of the skins will actually give the broth a golden color and that will mean a delicious chicken flavor, so I recommend leaving them on the carrots. peel them if they're nasty, but these are good. I'm just going to cut off the ends and just super hard cut into these to expose a little more of their surface area to flavor the soup.

Two celery sticks also coarsely chopped. and then I have a tablespoon of whole black peppercorns that will eventually strain out of the broth so it doesn't matter that they are whole and not cracked and then two heads of garlic that I'm splitting crosswise in half to keep them relatively intact but to expose its flavor and those go in skins and everything again is straining nicely and then a couple sprigs of fresh dill we're going to add dill at the end for a little crisp and vibrant moment but you can also add it to the stock to impart some of its flavor so the chickens that go into the pot are nestling on top of everything and I'm going to add 14 cups of water so basically you want just enough water to just barely cover the chicken so it's all submerged but not so much that the broth it's weak and tasteless, that's fine, so we're going on the stove and I'm going to bring it to a boil, which will take probably 10 or 15 minutes.

We keep waiting until the chicken breast registers 155, at which point we'll take the chicken out and let it sit until it's cool enough to handle and then we'll put the chicken back in and I'll take you out again, that's it, that's it for now so the internal temperature of the chicken is 155 of the breast at the thickest part so I'm going to turn this off momentarily and bring it back up and now we're going to lift this chicken okay so one way to do it is to take out the tongue I eat right into the cavity and then tip it to let some of that broth drip back into the pot and you can always use another heavy spoon to help lift just let it drain for a second then onto your cutting board and let have this rest here until it's cool enough to handle like five or ten, so now we're going to shred this chicken, which is a lot easier than it sounds if you know where all the chicken parts are. that

makes

it easy to pull it all apart so let's go over the anatomy here we are breast side up so here the two breasts here are the two wings and then here are the two legs which is 5 plus thigh so the meat of the breast is white meat, which means it has a tendency to dry out, so we're going to remove it from the carcass now and set it aside and shred it up and add it back to the soup later because we don't want it to cook more than you already have, on the other hand, the legs and wings are dark meat, they can hold out a bit longer, in fact they will benefit from it, they will get very nice and perky and tender and the broth will continue to pack flavor while they're in so we'll take this wing out of the breast and then we'll take a knife and make a cut right between the join and it'll part to make the incisions right where the breast and legs meet go down the side here and then you can use your hand to get this out of the socket which is kind of gross but ok take that joint out and it will actually come out when you rip it now we remove the breast meat there is a breast bone running right down the middle of the chicken and you're going to use your knife to cut through the meat on both sides of that bone as well leaving the bone behind so first a little bit to the left of the breast.

I'm making a cut down and then I'm following the outline of the carcass so I angle my knife a little bit to cut the meat so there's a brisket and then I like to actually flip it over because it's easier for me to cut it this way way because I'm right handed so now on the other side of the chest I make a cut down and then carve it away from the carcass ok so two legs two breasts two wings and the rest of the carcass so the carcass go back in there are tons of flavor in the bones a lot of gelatin there is still meat in there that has a lot to give we are still going to put the wings back in the pot too we are going to remove the skin from these legs because as it cooks it goes away to melt and it's going to have a lot of fat left over otherwise if you want a clear broth you have to remove it and the legs go back in and let's go back over the stove and bring it back to a simmer ok this will simmer for 40 minutes until the leg meat is incredibly tender so just give it time so what's left here are our two chicken breasts.

I'm going to discard the skin and then you can use forks to shred or I actually prefer to do it with my hands and just shred the meat into little little pieces ok set that aside and we're going to chop the veggies but first we're going to clean it off from our cutting board, you know? There's a new dish soap here, that's it, Gabi, what's up with the new dish soap? Later on I eat fresh vegetables that are tender and cooked I'm going to peel the carrots for this one because they'll look better they're like presentation carrots if you know anything about that and just slice them into very retro thin points and then the same way, for the celery, sautéing the thick-end kind of so the breast flakes vegetally, the chicken legs to finish braising, which will be another 15 minutes or so and then we'll break it up and strain the broth and then lastly , and this is the best part, we'll throw in the dead aleni and cook the pasta right in the broth, which is nice because it all happens in one pot, you don't need to bring the pasta water to a boil.

I'll talk about that later, I'll grab these tongs and take a look, but at this point you can see that the broth has a very beautiful color, okay, the golden hue is thanks in part to the skin of the yellow onions and the amount of time. that this broth came in contact with all that chicken, all the bones, the carcass is a beautiful thing, so I'm going to go find the legs and just take a little piece and see if it flakes right away, which means it's tender and we're ready to go so come back here for a bit take these legs out so there's two let them cool for a minute and in the meantime I'm going to strain the broth well so now that all the vegetables and the bones have given this broth as much as possible we'll strain it all out and put it in a new pot and discard it now because it's pretty lifeless at this point but we use it for all it's worth let's put this back on the fire and we bring to a boil and cook our Giulini and there we now shred the meat the very very tender leg meat that comes off very easy with your hands and mash that into the bowl with the chicken breast okay so here is all our meat that will come back to the hands once again smells exactly like basil, don't they smell like it smells like summer, okay?

I'm chopping dill which I'm going to add a bit later, there's a lot of dill in this soup and that's because I love dill and I think chicken dill noodle soup is one of life's grea

test

delights, however, if you don't need to put the dill in, you can leave it out, or you can use parsley or chives, cilantro. the nice thing about did aleni is that it cooks very quickly and so you can cook it right in the stock pot instead of adding it to another pot of boiling water if you were to use a larger pasta like an egg noodle for a penne or a fusilli or whatever else you probably want to cook separately just because there would be a lot of starch and it would take a long time to cook, but by the time it's cooked your broth will reduce and you kind of throw it all away.

I designed this recipe in such a way that you don't have to do any of that as long as you use a small pasta so you just made aleni you could use orzo you could use the ABC pasta something small macaroni would be fine and the broth just boil so I'm stirring six ounces it's not a full box because this isn't the main event I'll just give it a little bit of body we'll cook it halfway for about four minutes before we incorporate all the veggies and meat that we just from scooping up there's a little bit of foam here so I'm going to start skimming again always skim what are the other little pastas in the world that's true here we come back with all the meat and then we add the fresh veggies and then let this cook another three to four minutes until the daleney is cooked and the celery and carrots are tender try one more c'est fini ok it was easy let's go back let's go because we haven't really paid much attention to seasoning yet here although we seasoned the chicken fairly aggressive, but this is your time to adjust the seasoning of the broth did you season the broth just forever? don't measure you need it and then I'm a big fan of a lot of black pepper in my chicken noodle soup and there goes all the batter you want the dill to be nice and bright and fresh so add it last minute you might as well just throw it on the table and have people do it while they eat ok let's serve let's make sure we get a lot of the goodness and everyone have a little bit of my pretty little celery my sweet sweet celery a little dill for garnish a few twigs, no more black pepper, that's all he wrote.

I think what we have learned today and what makes this chicken soup better than all the others is that we spend a lot of time in the broth, so it is very important in the deliciousness. The soup factor and we were very careful to make sure the chicken breast didn't get overcooked which is the bane of my existence overcooked chicken breast and chicken noodle soup so now we have a perfectly cooked chicken Very flavorful broth Tender chicken Legs just cooked through small slices of carrot and celery, lots of dill, black pepper. I'm a cute little d'Alene.

In fact, I'm going home now. with me let's go eat this in bed but you can't come there we can get rid of this now