Homestyle Chicken Noodle Soup — The Saturday-After-the-Visit Soup with Homemade Egg Noodles

I want to start with the Super Bowl, because the Super Bowl was the small comedy of the week, and then I want to walk you through the homestyle chicken noodle soup, because the soup was the work, and the soup was what I had been holding in my notebook for three months waiting for the right Saturday.

Super Bowl Sunday was last Sunday, February fifth. Falcons against Patriots. Mama and I watched the first half on the small TV in the living room with a tray of pigs in a blanket I had made for the occasion, from a tube of Pillsbury crescent rolls and a pack of cheap Bar S hot dogs cut into thirds, baked on a sheet pan at 375 for fifteen minutes. The pigs in a blanket are not a recipe. The pigs in a blanket are a tradition. The pigs in a blanket cost $3.40 for the whole tray and we ate the whole tray.

The Falcons led twenty-eight to three at halftime. Mama, who has rooted for whoever is playing the Patriots since she stopped liking Tom Brady around 2003 for reasons she has never fully explained to me, said, at halftime, baby, I think we have got this one. I said, I do not know, Mama, the game is not over. The Falcons proceeded to lose the lead, the game went to overtime, and the Patriots won twenty-eight to thirty-four. Mama threw a pillow at the TV at the kickoff of overtime, which is a thing I had not seen Mama do before, and which I want to write down because it was both very out of character and very funny. She laughed about it five minutes later. We ate the rest of the pigs in a blanket. We went to bed disappointed but not destroyed, which is, increasingly, the shape of the disappointments in this household.

The visit Saturday was our fourth. Cody was tired. He had been up late Thursday night for the GED class and then up early Friday morning for unit cleaning duty. He had a small cut on the back of his right hand from sandpaper in the carpentry workshop — the unit runs a vocational program where the inmates make small wooden projects, and Cody had signed up for it last week. He is now in three programs in the unit: the GED, the carpentry vocational, and a twice-weekly substance-abuse recovery group. He is collecting programs the way other people collect baseball cards, because each program enrollment is a line on his eventual appeal letter for re-sentencing in July, and we are all working that letter even though he is the only one who can be inside it.

I made homestyle chicken noodle soup Saturday night for the after-visit dinner because the drive to Tulsa in winter takes everything out of you and because chicken noodle soup is the food that hugs you back when nothing else can. The recipe was Mel’s Kitchen Cafe’s homestyle version, which is the magazine version of the soup my grandmother used to make, with one specific difference: the egg noodles are homemade, not from a bag. I have been wanting to try homemade egg noodles for three months. Saturday was the day.

The egg noodle math: a cup and three-quarters of all-purpose flour, $0.20 worth from the bag. Three large egg yolks, plus one whole egg, $0.40 worth from the carton. A half teaspoon of salt. Three tablespoons of water. That is the whole dough. The dough costs about sixty cents to make and yields enough noodles for a 6-quart pot of soup, which is more than three or four times what a $1.79 bag of egg noodles would yield, and the homemade noodles are a different food than the boxed ones.

The technique on the egg noodles is the kneading and the rolling. You whisk the flour and salt in a bowl. You make a well in the center. You put the yolks, the whole egg, and the water in the well. You whisk the eggs together with a fork, then slowly draw the flour into the eggs from the sides of the well, until you have a shaggy dough. You knead the dough on a floured counter for about eight minutes, until it is smooth and stiff and bounces back when you press a finger into it. You wrap it in plastic wrap and let it rest for thirty minutes — the rest is the trick; the gluten relaxes, and the dough becomes much easier to roll thin.

After the rest, you cut the dough in half. You roll each half on a floured counter as thin as you can get it, ideally about an eighth of an inch — thinner than a flour tortilla but thicker than a sheet of pasta dough. You let the rolled-out sheets sit on the counter for ten minutes to dry slightly, which makes them easier to cut without sticking.

You cut the sheets into strips with a sharp knife or a pizza cutter. The strips can be wide or thin, your call — I went with about a quarter-inch wide, which gives the soup good chunky noodles. You separate the strips with your fingers, dust them with a little extra flour to prevent sticking, and pile them on a plate.

The soup itself is the same chicken soup technique I have been writing about for weeks — chicken thighs simmered in broth with carrots, celery, onion, garlic, bay leaf, salt, and pepper for forty minutes, the chicken pulled and shredded, the bones simmered for an extra fifteen minutes for depth and then discarded. The fresh egg noodles get dropped into the simmering finished soup and cooked for four to five minutes, which is the only part of the noodle work that is fast. They cook quicker than dried noodles because they are tender. They float to the top when they are done. You stir in the shredded chicken at the same moment. You taste for salt. You serve.

The soup at the kitchen table Saturday night, with the homemade egg noodles, was the kind of soup Mama said she had not had since her mother passed in 2004. She said, after the first bite, baby, this is my mama’s soup. She did not say anything else about it for the rest of the dinner. She just ate two bowls in slow deliberate spoonfuls and let the kitchen be quiet around her. I let her have the quiet. I have learned, this year, when to let her have the quiet.

The pot is in the fridge in two containers labeled Sunday and Monday. The basil plant on the windowsill has put out three more new leaves since I last counted. The fourth visit is in the rear-view mirror. The fifth is six days away. The cooking is the work. The soup is the soup. We are still here.

The recipe is below, the way Mel’s Kitchen Cafe wrote it, with the homemade egg noodle technique included. If you have never made egg noodles by hand, do not be afraid — the dough is forgiving, and the rest period is the secret. Roll thin, dry slightly, cut into strips. Drop into simmering broth for four to five minutes. The soup with homemade noodles is a different soup than the soup with boxed ones. Make this on a Saturday night when somebody you love needs the kind of dinner that the boxed kind cannot do.

White Bean Chicken Chili

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

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 medium yellow onion, diced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
• 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• Salt and black pepper, to taste
• 2 cans (15 ounces each) cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 can (4 ounces) diced green chiles
• 4 cups chicken broth
• Juice of 1 lime
• 1/4 cup sour cream (optional, for stirring in)
• Fresh cilantro, for topping
• Shredded Monterey Jack cheese, for topping

For the Homemade Tortilla Chips

• 6 flour or corn tortillas, cut into triangles
• Vegetable oil, for frying
• Salt, to taste

Instructions

1. Cook the chicken. Place chicken breasts in a large pot or Dutch oven with the chicken broth. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 15–18 minutes until cooked through. Remove chicken and shred with two forks. Set aside. Reserve the broth in the pot.
2. Sauté the aromatics. In the same pot, add olive oil over medium heat. Add diced onion and cook until softened, about 4–5 minutes. Add garlic, cumin, chili powder, oregano, and cayenne. Stir and cook for 1 minute until fragrant.
3. Build the chili. Add cannellini beans and green chiles to the pot along with the reserved broth. Stir to combine. Bring to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes, allowing flavors to meld.
4. Thicken slightly. Using a potato masher or the back of a spoon, mash about 1/4 of the beans against the side of the pot. This gives the chili a creamier body without adding cream.
5. Add the chicken back. Return shredded chicken to the pot. Stir in sour cream if using. Squeeze in the lime juice and season with salt and pepper to taste. Simmer for 5 more minutes.
6. Make the tortilla chips. While the chili simmers, heat about 1/2 inch of vegetable oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Fry tortilla triangles in batches until golden and crispy, about 1–2 minutes per side. Drain on paper towels and sprinkle with salt.
7. Serve. Ladle chili into bowls and top with shredded cheese, cilantro, and an extra squeeze of lime if desired. Serve with homemade tortilla chips on the side.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 340 | Protein: 32g | Fat: 8g | Carbs: 34g | Fiber: 8g | Sodium: 780mg