Thai Chicken Noodle Soup

It’s spring but still chilly and rainy.  Time for soup!  This tastes good despite reading about food toxicology so I must have done something right.   As some people know my health is my white whale; I get sick.  A lot.  So I’m always making soup to have on hand, this one is great if you have an upset stomach.  Ginger is very soothing and a common treatment in eastern cultures for nausea.  We do it commonly in the west too (gingerale anyone?) so this is a great flu time soup.  I also tend to like a little heat if my throat is sore.  Thus this soup is a double whammy!

Thai Ginger Chicken Noodle Soup

• 1 whole boiling chicken
• Water
• Sachet filled with:
  • 1 lemongrass stalk, bruised
  • 2 whole star anise pods
  • 1tsp coriander seeds
  • 3 cloves crushed garlic
  • 1tbsp shredded fresh ginger
  • 2 whole dried Thai Chile peppers
  • zest 1 lime
  • stalks from bunch of cilantro (below)
• Olive oil, extra virgin
• 1 onion, thinly sliced (I used vidalia)
• Ginger 2Tbsp, thinly sliced and chopped
• Noodles (This batch was Kosher for Passover but you can use any noodle you like.  I’d recommend using more traditional rice noodles.)
• Sliced carrots, broccoli, bamboo shoots
• Salt
• 1 bunch cilantro, coarsely chopped

Rub down the chicken with salt and pepper.  Remove the skin if you want less fat leaching out into your soup but I prefer to leave it on and skim the fat off instead.  Plus this way I can save it for matzoh balls in the future.

Start by filling a stock pot with water, your boiling chicken (insides removed) and the sachet filled with all the flavorings.  You will also probably need to add 2Tbsp of salt.  Bring the water to a boil and then reduce to a simmer for approximately 1.5 hours.  The chicken is done when it begins to fall off the bone.  Remove the sachet as well.

I have a tendency to find my chicken so soft that it falls apart when I attempt to remove it from pot at this point.  As a result I’ve gotten into the habit of wrapping it with cheesecloth.  This helps make removal easier in my opinion.

Let the chicken cool on the counter until you can touch it with your hands and pick the meat off the bones.  Sometimes I find I have more chicken than I want in my soup so save the picken’s for salads/sandwiches/omelets etc.

While the chicken cools prepare the noodles in another pot so that they are al dente.  The noodles will be getting added into the soup pot so you don’t want them to be already soft and falling apart or they will disintegrate.

Finally in a sautee pan heat the olive oil and then sweat the sliced onions until they just turn a light brown character.  You want them to retain a little bit of crisp texture in this soup but still extract some of that delicious caramel flavor from them.  Add all the vegetables, chicken and noodles back the to the broth and cook for an additional 30 minutes.  Adjust the seasonings and flavors to your taste.  Add the chopped cilantro in at the last 5 minutes or atop the soup as a garnish.