Description
This homemade chicken soup recipe creates the most incredible rich, golden broth by slowly simmering a whole chicken with vegetables. The result is tender, fall-off-the-bone chicken in a deeply flavorful broth that’s perfect for any time you need comfort food. Easy to make, freezes beautifully, and tastes just like the soup your grandmother used to make.
Ingredients
For the Soup Base:
- 1 whole chicken (about 3 lbs) – Don’t go cheap here, get the good stuff
- 4 carrots, halved – I don’t even peel them half the time
- 4 stalks celery, halved – Use the leafy parts too
- 1 large onion, halved – Yellow onions work best
- Water, enough to cover everything – Filtered if your tap water tastes funky
- Salt and pepper, to taste – Sea salt makes a difference
- 1 teaspoon chicken bouillon granules – Better Than Bouillon is my go-to
Instructions
Chuck that whole chicken in your pot along with the chopped carrots, celery, and onion. Pour cold water over everything until it’s covered by about an inch. Don’t measure – just eyeball it.
Crank up the heat and get it boiling. You’ll see gross foam bubbling up – that’s normal. Once it’s really going, turn it down to low and let it bubble away gently for about 90 minutes. Set a timer because I always forget and end up with mush.
Every twenty minutes or so, grab a big spoon and scoop off the foam. My mom never did this step and her soup always looked cloudy. Takes two seconds and makes all the difference.
After an hour and a half, that chicken should be falling apart. Carefully fish it out with tongs – it’s hot as hell. Let it cool on a plate while you deal with the vegetables. Pull all the meat off and throw away the bones and skin. I usually pick at it while I’m doing this because I’m hungry and impatient.
Scoop out the vegetables. I chop them up smaller and throw them back in because I hate waste. My husband prefers when I toss them and start fresh with new vegetables, but that seems crazy to me.
Put the shredded chicken back in the pot with the broth. Add back your chopped vegetables if you’re keeping them. Heat it all up again on medium heat for maybe ten minutes.
Now taste it. Add salt, pepper, and that bouillon. Start small – you can always add more but you can’t take it back. I probably use more salt than I should, but it needs it.
Notes
Don’t skip skimming that foam – seriously. It looks nasty floating there anyway. Save the fat that rises to the top in a jar in your fridge. Use it for cooking potatoes or vegetables later. My grandmother did this during the Depression and never stopped.
Taste the soup every thirty minutes. Every chicken is different, every pot cooks different. What worked last time might not work this time. Don’t boil it hard the whole time or you’ll get mushy vegetables and stringy chicken.
If you’re adding noodles, cook them separately in salted water. Otherwise they soak up all your broth and get disgusting when you reheat leftovers. Learned this the hard way.
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 1 hour 30 minutes
- Category: Soup
- Method: Simmering
- Cuisine: American