Creamy Lemon Chicken Noodle Soup

The first Monday without school. September is three months away and it will not come for me. The alarm did not ring at six. The car did not drive east on Long Beach Road. The classroom is someone else's now — Mr. Rodriguez's, the young teacher with the passion, and I hope he finds what I found in that room: the green light, the moment when a student's eyes change, the reason to get up. He will find it. The room still holds it.

I stood in my kitchen at seven a.m. with a freedom I had not felt since 1979, when I was twenty-two and about to start teaching, and the freedom was terrifying because freedom without structure is just space, and space needs to be filled, and I have spent forty-three years filling my space with lesson plans and essays and students, and now the space is empty and the filling is up to me.

So I cooked. I cooked all day. I made challah. I made chicken soup. I made rugelach — three flavors, four dozen. I made brisket. I made the chocolate babka that I haven't had time for in years. I stood at the stove from seven a.m. to nine p.m. and I cooked with the ferocity of a woman who needs to prove to herself that she still exists, that the teacher may have retired but the cook has not, that the stove is still warm and the hands still know the dough.

Marvin ate everything I put in front of him. He is the world's best audience: he eats, he says "good," and he asks for nothing except more. The simplicity of his need is a gift I did not expect: after forty-three years of students who needed me to be teacher, mentor, grader, counselor, and cheerleader, Marvin needs me to be one thing: the woman who feeds him. The reduction is not diminishment. It is clarity.

I wrote for the blog — a long post about the first day of not-teaching, about standing in the kitchen and realizing that the kitchen has always been waiting for me, patient as a book on a shelf, ready to be opened when the reader is ready. I am ready. I am sixty-five years old and I am ready for the kitchen and the blog and the writing and the man in the recliner. The retirement is not an ending. It is a shift in weight, from one foot to the other, from the classroom to the kitchen, from the teacher to the cook. The weight is the same. The foot is different. The ground holds.

Of everything I made that day — the challah, the rugelach, the brisket, the babka — it was the chicken soup that steadied me. There is something about a pot of soup that resists panic: it asks you to be patient, to skim, to wait, and patience is a thing I have in me somewhere, buried under forty-three years of lesson plans and parent conferences. This creamy lemon version is the one I keep coming back to now, in these early weeks of retirement, because the lemon lifts it, brightens it, turns something familiar into something that feels like a beginning rather than an end.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 35 minutes | Total Time: 50 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, diced
3 medium carrots, peeled and sliced into rounds
3 stalks celery, sliced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary
1/4 teaspoon black pepper, plus more to taste
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
6 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts or thighs
6 ounces wide egg noodles
1 cup heavy cream
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (about 1 large lemon)
1 teaspoon lemon zest
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped, for serving

Instructions

Sauté the aromatics. In a large heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven, melt the butter with the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion, carrots, and celery and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 6–8 minutes. Add the garlic, thyme, rosemary, salt, and pepper and cook for 1 minute more until fragrant.
Build the broth. Pour in the chicken broth and raise the heat to medium-high. Add the whole chicken breasts or thighs and bring the soup to a gentle boil.
Cook the chicken. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, partially covered, for 18–20 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through and registers 165°F at the thickest part.
Shred the chicken. Remove the chicken to a cutting board and use two forks to shred it into bite-sized pieces. Return the shredded chicken to the pot.
Cook the noodles. Bring the soup back up to a gentle boil over medium heat. Add the egg noodles and cook according to package directions, usually 7–9 minutes, until just tender.
Add the cream and lemon. Reduce heat to low. Stir in the heavy cream, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Taste and adjust salt and pepper as needed. Do not boil after adding the cream.
Serve. Ladle into bowls and finish with a scatter of fresh parsley. Serve with crusty bread or, if you happen to have it, a thick slice of challah.

Nutrition (per serving)

Creamy Lemon Chicken Noodle Soup — The Soup That Said I'm Still Here