I'm making chicken noodle soup for dinner. I want to add rosemary for flavor. When do I put it in? Thanks!

If you want a rosemary flavor in all of the broth, then put it in with the bouquet garni when you are making the actual broth (Step 2).

If you only want a rosemary flavor for the soup that you are preparing, then add a sprig when you bring the 12 cups of broth to a simmer (Step 6). You can also chop it up, but be careful with rosemary though, as it can be quite strong.

Let the broth simmer for a bit so the rosemary can infuse its flavor. If using a sprig, you can remove it prior to serving. Cheers!

I'm assuming this is easy to double? I can't imagine making soup only for 4. I normally double and freeze half.

Should it be frozen before adding noodles, and then add the noodles when reheated?

Yes, absolutely this can be doubled/tripled...you can make this soup in the biggest pot you have.

I would add some cooked noodles when you reheat the soup. You can add them before freezing, but their texture won't be as nice. Cheers!

I'm glad to report this turned out excellent. I had a very clear broth for the most part, except I got hungry and after 1h 20min the chicken was still pink inside (was simmering it for that long). So I decided to cheat and bring it to a boil to finish cooking the chicken faster. The broth went cloudy as expected, but given I was just making a soup, I didn't really care.

I actually peeled the skin off my chicken meat to keep it healthier (less fat) and it still turned out excellent. Thanks for the great video and next time I'll start my chicken soup a bit earlier!

Hi there,

All went well up until step 5, but when simmering for 1 hr a lot of my broth disappeared ( only got to 45 min). There was only a few cups of water left. Not sure why (lid was still on the pot). Any ideas on why this happened?

Regards
James

It might be helpful to review the lesson on Broth-Based Clear Soups and the Stock Fundamentals. If you used a tall, skinny pot and the same amount of ingredients, you should have wound up with a good amount of broth in the end. A wide pot can cause a lot more evaporation; however, you say you used a lid. We cook our broths and stocks without a lid to prevent the ingredients from boiling, which is a very important step in making stocks and broths.

Did you remove the meat once it was cooked and then add the bones back to the broth? It is important that the ingredients are always covered with water during cooking. Let us know. Cheers!

Thanks for the advice, I gave it another go & it worked perfectly.
I think the main issue on the first attempt was boiling, rather than simmering. Now for the next challenge... :-)
- James

I want to make this soup for my family but they don't eat the dark meat of the chicken. I would like there to be substantial pieces of meat in the finished product, so how would I modify this recipe?

-Mike

For flavor, I would suggest that you make the broth the same way as stated in the recipe. You could then add some chicken breasts at the end. Just be sure that you don't over cook them; otherwise, they will be dry. Then remove the meat and use the breast meat in the soup for garnish.

If you haven't already you may also want to check out the lesson on "How to Make Broth Soups" and maybe even the lesson on "How to Make Stock-Based Soups". Hope this helps. Cheers!

Wow! I followed the directions to the tee. The broth was so clear! Made this tonight to aid in getting rid of a cold. The soup is very soothing and especially when I know the exact fresh ingredients that goes in my soup. Thank you for the recipe. :)

Great job! If you haven't check out the lesson yet (Broth-Based Clear Soups), make sure to do so. Aside from making chicken noodle soup, you'll have the flexibility to make many other flavorful soups to suit your tastes. Hope you're feeling better! Cheers!

We had this yesterday and it was really good, I'm always taken aback by 'real' flavors, by how natural and pure things taste when you make them from scratch. One mistake I made was cooking the noodles straight in the broth. They absorbed a lot of the broth, and I had to add water, which diluted the flavor a little. I felt really bad as I saw everyone add salt to their soup, especially because I knew what it tasted like before I added the noodles. Next time I'll make the noodles separately.

One thing though that I thought should be better is the flavor of the chicken itself, which I thought was very bland. What can I do to enhance the flavor of the chicken? I'm thinking that adding salt/pepper to the chicken would come off as soon as you add water and would do little to the chicken itself. I thought about maybe brining the chicken overnight, or roast the chicken first, take the meat off and use the carcass and bones for the broth.

Any other tips?

There are a couple of reasons why the chicken could have been a bit bland. Perhaps the chicken was cooked a bit too long? It should be removed from the broth as soon as it is cooked (then remove the meat and place the bones back into the broth). Also, the quality and flavor of the chicken to begin with will make a big difference as well.

If you were to roast the chicken before hand, you would end up with a much darker broth. If you are okay with that, then you could do that. However, it will not necessarily make the chicken itself that much more flavorful if it was not flavorful to begin with, but it will add some flavor for sure.

You might want to try making this again using a nice free-range organic chicken and see if that makes a difference. Of course, you still need to make sure that it doesn't stay in the broth too long etc. Hope that helps. Cheers!

It was an organic chicken. The broth (before I had to add the water) had a super flavor, REALLY good, so I was very surprised that the chicken itself had so little flavor. So what you're saying is that the longer you let it go, the more the flavor is extracted from the chicken?

What I did was butcher the chicken, because I've always wanted to try that and it was really easy following the lesson here on Rouxbe. Initially I let it simmer for maybe 1-1.5 hour before I took the meat out.

Next time I'll definitely check for doneness and take the meat out sooner (I assume that works the same as when you roast it, stick a thermometer in the thigh, done when that hits 165 degrees). About butchering the chicken first, should I have done that or not?

Great idea to practice your butchering skills for this Daniel, and yes, you can butcher the chicken if you like. Just keep in mind that you will need to remove the pieces of meat as they are done. For instance, the chicken breasts will be cooked well before the thighs. If you overcook the breasts they will become quite flavorless. This is why we generally recommend using chicken legs for the broth, that way they are all done around the same time. They also offer more flavor than the breasts (due to the fat and connective tissue).

Same if you were going to add roasted chicken, cook until just done and then add any meat last minute. Hope that helps Daniel. Cheers!

Oddly enough the store only sells drumsticks, wings and skinless thighs, so I went for the whole chicken. Will go to another store next time for legs and let you know how that turned out. Thanks for your time Dawn I appreciate it.
Have a great weekend :)

If the price of the drumsticks and thighs is a good price, then you could just buy those. After all, together they are the two parts of the chicken leg.

Have a great weekend yourself Daniel. Hopefully it's as nice where you are as it is here. Cheers!

In the 2012 Thanksgiving season in the New York Times, Jacques Pépin revived the Chinese method of steaming poultry, scaling things up to accommodate a nice, plump turkey. Inspired by that technique, I started with a large roasting chicken. The results were excellent (finishing the moist, nicely-rendered chicken to crisp the skin in a hot oven for less than a half hour), so I persisted. I have been using the pasta insert for my stock pot to steam the chicken, and I place a couple of halved onions, some chopped celery and scrubbed, chopped carrots in the steamer water beneath the insert. When the chicken is done steaming (often barely a half hour - be sure to cut slits down to the leg and wing joints to guarantee even cooking), I lift out the chicken (I used thighs this latest time) in its insert and give the resulting rich chicken broth left in the stock pot a quick reduction and end up with the finest chicken soup I have ever had. Almost no effort, and the result speaks for itself. I studded the latest soup experiment with 1" herbed dumplings that I used to top the soup in its serving vessel. I finished that in the oven, to general acclaim. My mother-in-law, coming from several generations of Italian restaurant owners, gave the loudest praise. Sounds like a good Rouxbe lesson candidate! Steamed Chicken. Give it a try!

Good for you for practicing and experimenting with different techniques Jack. It does sound like something like this would make a good practice recipe for the steaming lessons. Cheers!