Tonight, I made the 21 Day Fix Easy Chicken Noodle Soup recipe, with a little help from my son, let me walk you through it!
Half a cup of onion, and two cups of celery. Easy enough. I sliced the onion, he sliced the celery, and admittedly, we measured neither. Hey, I'm trying to increase my daily intake of vegetables, and he's a fussy eater generally, so any time I can squeak a few more veggies past...well, either one of us, I jump on the opportunity.
Speaking of my son, I took the opportunity to get this all together a little faster. I set to work on sweating the vegetables a little bit,
and turned him loose on the chicken. Boys love that kind of stuff apparently, cause he made quick work of it. Now, could you prepare your own chicken to use in this recipe? Of course. Would it be far more time consuming, and probably not save you a single thin dime? Absolutely. Let the chicken cool, pull it (he bare handed it at first, but picked up a fork before he was done), try not to get in any skin because you don't want the pre-flavored chicken interfering with your soup flavors. Not to mention, the skin would add in a lot of extra fat and calories, that would make this way less healthy for you.
Aah, back to the soup.
Added in the carrots! It seems like it would sort of go without saying, but cut the vegetables about the size that you'd want to fit them in your mouth, yeah? If you like a good, chunky soup - leave the carrots big and chunky, and throw in some whole hunks of celery. You like your soup a little finer, make your dice a little smaller.
From here, you add in your broth (one box, although truthfully, I thought it was a little dry, I'd add in a little more), oregano, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, and add in some whole wheat pasta. I used gluten free pasta from Barilla, which made this recipe pretty darn close to gluten free - I forgot to check the broth, and I can't make any guarantee on the chicken, since I didn't prepare it. I guess we found the advantage to preparing the chicken yourself, didn't we?
From here, cook it until the noodles are soft!
And devour! It was fantastic, it didn't leave me feeling weighed down and heavy, but filled me up at the same time. And I fed something that was mostly vegetables to my very vegetable adverse (almost!) 11 year old, and he ate two bowls and made immediate plans for us to make it every Saturday!
Winner winner, chicken (soup) dinner!
The greens that you see on top are chopped cilantro. I liked it - but then, I like cilantro. Since cilantro has it's fair share of haters, I'll say - I quite suspect that you could go without, and never notice it missing.
It felt great to take charge of my own health, and my sons health for the day - I suspect he would have been reaching for frozen burritos if we'd not made this soup - and I'm already looking forward to leftovers for lunch tomorrow!
I'm not able to reprint the recipe for you here, although thanks to the wonder that is Pinterest, I found a copy, here!
