Chicken and Noodles

 

It's that time of year.  Everyone is feeling a little frantic.  A little over extended, ok maybe a lot overextended.  And your worst fear of getting sick just in time for all of those holiday parties may just be coming true.  In my family not only do we have all of the holiday parties, we also have a lot of December birthdays.  As you can imagine this adds to the insanity.  Bouncing from Ugly Sweater party to cookie swap to birthday and back again is bound to take it's toll.

We all have some of our favorite comfort foods and this is one of mine.  Same flavors as chicken noodle soup but so much better.  Less broth.  Big fat egg noodles.  Yum!  You can certainly go out and get a chicken and have it quartered and then cook it just to make this, but it is oh so much easier and I think tastier, to make this with the remains of a whole roasted chicken.  Luckily for me I had roasted a chicken last night for dinner with Kristin and Zach.  And the legs, thighs, wings and some of the breast meat didn't get eaten.  So when I was having my minor December meltdown of the day I remembered that a good portion of the chicken was hanging out in the fridge.  That I had onions and carrots and half a bag of egg noodles.  And that lurking in the back of the cupboard there was some chicken and vegetable broth.  BINGO!  Need for comfort food crisis solved!  So I pulled myself together, finished putting the lights on the tree that I had wrestled into the house and into the stand by myself (really who did I think was going to help?  Certainly not Pippa or the Bad Boys) and into the kitchen I went.

I chopped up half an onion and half of a bag if zig zag cut carrots (the carrots were left over from a curry that I forgot to put them in last weekend, I don't usually have such things around the house).  Sauteed them in olive oil and set to work deconstructing the chicken.  I left the shredded chicken on a piece of foil that had been covering the bird while it hung out in the fridge over night and poured two cups of chicken broth (all I had) and one cup of vegetable broth over the carrots and onion.  I didn't have any celery but I do have a seasoning grinder that among other delicious things - red pepper flakes, garlic, salt - has celery.  A couple of good grinds of that and about a tablespoon of dried parsley and we were in business.

I let all of that hang out and meld and fired up another burner for the noodles.  Big pot of water boiling away and in go the egg noodles.  I cooked them to just underdone and then added the noodles and the chicken to the vegetable brothy goodness.  Another few minutes until the noodles were done and dinner was in my bowl and I was on the couch watching last night's Modern Family.  Ahhhhh.  Time to catch my breath before the next holiday adventure!

 

I hope you have something equally quick and comforting to pull together, or you give this a shot, to help you chill out during this busy time of year!

*you may want to have a little more broth on hand - the noodles do soak up quite a bit!