A watercolour of a clear brown broth with pale noodles coiled below shredded chicken and green herb flecks
Generated with OpenAI gpt-image-1
Adapted from The chicken noodle soup common to most of Europe and much of Asia

Chicken and noodle broth

An established dish converted to shelf-stable ingredients. Every substitution is documented below.

How long it keeps

About 6 months, set by Mushrooms (dried).

Indicative, for planning a build before you buy. The answer for a pack you already own is the best before date printed on it, and that only holds if it has been stored as the label says.

Serves
3
Burners
1
Pans
1
Water
1 L
Active
10 min
Total
30 min

Ingredients

The mushrooms are the whole reason this tastes like soup rather than like a stock cube dissolved in water.

  1. 15 g of dried mushrooms into 700 ml of just-boiled water. Fifteen minutes, covered. Lift them out, chop them, and keep the liquid. Leave the last spoonful behind, which is where the grit settles.
  2. That liquid back in the pan with the dried onion, the chopped mushrooms, the stock cube and the soy sauce. Simmer five minutes.
  3. Noodles straight in. Four minutes, or whatever the packet says, stirring so they do not clump.
  4. Drained carrots and the shredded chicken in for the last two minutes, just to heat.

Pepper at the table.

If you are eating this over two sittings, cook the noodles separately. Left in the broth they keep drinking it and you come back to a pan of soft noodles and no soup.

Serves 3.

What this was adapted from

The chicken noodle soup common to most of Europe and much of Asia: a clear savoury broth, noodles cooked in it, shredded chicken on top

  • a carcass simmered into stock → a stock cube, dried mushrooms and their soaking water

    A real chicken broth is the whole dish and a cube is not that. Dried mushrooms carry the savoury weight a carcass would, and their soaking liquid is the best stock a cupboard makes. It is a darker, earthier broth than the original and better than a cube alone by a wide margin.

  • fresh carrot, leek and celery → tinned carrots added late

    The aromatics are doing sweetness and colour. Tinned carrots are already soft, so they go in at the end to keep their shape rather than at the start to flavour the pot.