Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

I'm on a food kick lately, can you tell?  I know it's Spring and soups and stews are not usually on a lot of menus at this time of year, but I recently had the most wonderful homemade chicken noodle soup while taking care of some friends kiddos and wanted to try making it myself.  The urgency to do it now comes because one of the ingredients will not be available to me up in Anchorage :(  but I'm HOPING to find a comparable substitute once I'm there.

Chicken noodle soup is another food item that I am rather particular about eating ~ none of the gross Campbell's version in a can...I want big chunks of chicken and noodles, not little unidentifiable pieces of what I think are supposed to pass as those ingredients.  So I don't typically eat chicken noodle soup very often...until now!

INGREDIENTS:

olive oil

1/2 cup onion, chopped

1-2 stalks celery, chopped

1-2 carrots, chopped

1 quart chicken broth

1/4 cup butter

1/4 cup flour

1 cup milk

1 bag Grandma's Noodles, cook/heat according to package directions

1 rotisserie chicken, diced

DIRECTIONS:

1. Saute onion, celery and carrots in olive oil until soft.

2. Add chicken broth, reserve 1/2 to 1 cup of broth.

3. Add chicken and simmer for 30 minutes.

4. In separate bowl, melt butter.  Whisk in flour and then reserved chicken broth.  Slowly whisk in milk.

5. Add #4 to broth and heat to low boil.

6. Add cooked noodles...soup thickens a little more as it cools.

   **Add salt & pepper to taste**

The genius and ease of this recipe comes from using a rotisserie chicken (no pre-cooking of chicken required - I didn't even dice it up - I just pulled it off in chunks and broke it up with my fingers).  The other is the noodles, Grandma's Noodles to be exact...

I'd never heard of these before but they are SOOOO good.  The company's headquarters are actually local here in Arvada, CO.  These noodles can be found in the frozen food section of the grocery store.  There were two different sized noodles (I chose the wide noodles) and two different sized BAGS of noodles - I bought the bigger, "Family-Sized" bag because I like a lot of noodles in my soup.  Sadly...they do not currently distribute their product to Anchorage, so if I want them there, I will have to have them shipped in dry ice...

FINAL RESULT:

Mmmmm....noodle soup...(to quote another "Friends" episode) :)

This recipe is definitely a keeper!!