One-Pot Roasted Chicken Noodle Soup Recipe

I thought I was being so cute when I was blogging this recipe; I woke up with a slight tickle in my throat and assumed I'd caught Sam's little cold and was going to kick it with some homemade chicken soup. When he woke up, I was halfway through roasting chicken, rolling out some fresh pasta, using up the rest of that Thanksgiving turkey stock...

Little did I know that a mere 6 hours later, the slight tickle in my throat would turn into severe body aches, headache, cough, fever, the full-blown flu.

Sam and I had just returned home from a trip to Punta Cana when he started coughing and complaining about feeling sick. I assumed it was a man-cold and he was fine and should suck it up (not my best quality... I'm working on it!). The next day was the day I woke up with the throat tickle and WOW. By day two, it took me a literal hour to muster up enough energy to get from the bed to the couch.

We went to urgent care that afternoon to make sure we didn't have Zika (those signs they have in the immigration line at the Atlanta airport about tropical diseases got in our head, I'll admit) and they did the nose swab test where they stab your actual brain with a Q-Tip through your nose and diagnosed us both with the flu. The doctor told us the best medicine is plenty of rest, water, and chicken soup. I was like welp, good thing I made some yesterday. Bad thing was I had 0 appetite for a week and the thought of it made me want to die.

But I promise, this recipe is the most phenomenal chicken soup I've ever had.

One-Pot Roasted Chicken Noodle Soup
Time: 1 hour 20 minutes
Serves: 4-6

Ingredients
1 boneless skinless chicken breast half
3 stalks celery
1 large yellow onion
3 carrots, peeled
8-10 cremini mushrooms
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
6 cups chicken stock, preferably homemade
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon fresh parsley, finely chopped

Noodles
3/4 cup plus 1/4 cup flour, divided
1 egg
1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 400˚. Place chicken breast in the bottom of a Dutch oven. Cut celery into 1/4" pieces and set aside. Cut onion into quarters, leaving on the outer skin. Cut carrots into 3-4" chunks. Clean mushrooms with a dry paper towel. Place onion, carrots, and mushrooms in with the chicken, and top with oil, salt, and pepper. Mix to evenly coat. Roast uncovered for 35 minutes, then remove chicken and vegetables to a cutting board to cool.

Using the same pot, melt butter over medium heat, then add celery and sweat until bright green and slightly softened; meanwhile, once roasted chicken and vegetables are cool enough to handle, cut chicken into bite-sized pieces, onions into 1/4" dice, carrots into 1/4" slices, and mushrooms into 1/4" slices. Add to softened celery.

Sprinkle chicken and vegetables with flour, and mix until no dry flour remains. Add chicken stock gradually, mixing well until all is added. Salt to taste. Once mixture comes to a gentle boil, reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes.

While soup is simmering, make the noodles. Dump the flour onto a clean countertop or board, reserving the extra 1/4 cup flour to the side, and make a well in the center. Crack the egg into the well. Sprinkle the top of the flour with the salt.

Using a fork, beat the egg, then gradually start adding flour into it. Once the egg mixture is thick enough not to run, add in the rest of the flour. Scrape any egg mixture off of the fork, and begin kneading dough by hand. If dough feels too loose and sticky, gradually incorporate the reserved flour. Once dough is smooth and elastic (about 3-5 minutes of kneading), wrap tightly in plastic wrap and let rest on counter for 20 minutes.

Press rested dough into a rectangle flat enough to send through the thickest setting on a pasta machine. Roll dough out 3 times, then fold into thirds (like a piece of paper for an envelope). Send through twice more, then fold in half. Send twice more, then fold in half one more time. Send through three more times, then send dough through the following times for each setting:
Setting 2: three
Setting 3: two
Setting 4: one
Setting 5: one
Note: If sheet gets too long to handle, cut in half during rolling process.
After setting 5, sprinkle sheet with flour to prevent sticking, cut sheet into 3" pieces, and send through the fettuccine attachment to create noodles. Set on a clean cotton kitchen towel.

Once soup is finished simmering, increase heat to medium and bring to a boil. Add noodles, and cook for 3 minutes. Turn off heat, add cream and parsley, and taste and adjust seasoning. Serve immediately.

---

The Details

Need a little more info? Let's break it down into detail. 

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links, meaning that I may make a commission if you choose to click through and make a purchase. I only link to products that I truly recommend. Thank you for your support!

Cookware

This recipe works with best a seasoned cast iron Dutch oven or enameled cast iron. I use a Lodge enameled cast iron Dutch oven in the color Island Spice red. You can also use a stainless steel stock pot, but you will most likely not be able to make it a one-pot meal since not all stainless cookware is oven safe. If that's the case, roast the chicken and vegetables in a roasting pan or even on a sheet pan, then switch to a stock pot for the stove top directions. You won't get as much flavor this way since you'll be leaving behind the brown bits and some salt, but it will still be good.

Roasting

Why roast the chicken and vegetables? Why not just cut them up raw and cook them with the celery? 

I mean, you could, but roasting improves both the flavor and texture. And isn't that what cooking is all about? 

Since carrots are such a starchy root vegetable, they tend to cook unevenly when cut and sautéed from their raw state. If you've ever had soup where some carrots are mushy and falling apart and others are still hard in the middle, that's what I'm talking about. By roasting first, you're both softening the carrots and also giving them a head start in flavor by starting to break down the structure and release natural sugars. 

When it comes to onions, I'm a crier. And if I'm feeling under the weather, I absolutely do not want to deal with the burning and stinging and watery eyes. Quartering them and throwing them in with the roast is just easier. Also, they tend to leave some pretty tasty caramelization behind that will get scraped up into the broth.

Another option for the mushrooms is to cut them, toss in oil and salt, and spread out on a sheet pan to roast separately from the other stuff. This will dehydrate them and caramelize them, so when you go to put them back into the soup, they'll rehydrate themselves in the broth and be little umami bombs. For the sake of making this a one-pot recipe, I kept them in with the other vegetables. 

I do not roast the celery with the other vegetables because celery cooks a lot quicker, and I prefer it to have some brightness and a bit of crunch in the finished dish. Roasting celery for 30 minutes would result in floppy, brownish, sad celery. 

Salt

Note that when adding salt, you'll want to add during each major step. So, before we roast the chicken and vegetables, we'll add salt. When we add the stock, we'll also add salt. And after adding the noodles, we'll salt once more before serving. Salt attracts moisture, so by adding it to food before cooking it, it allows some salt to penetrate deeper into the food, drawing moisture in and out. The salt allows the flavors to meld, and you'll get a much better final product as a result. If all you did was add salt at the end of cooking, the resulting product would be very flat and one-note. 

Health

You can also add a couple cloves of garlic in with the celery during the last minute of cooking before adding in the other vegetables and chicken. I find it to be somewhat overpowering for this dish, but the health boost you get from garlic can be super helpful when you're dealing with a cold. You can always add a splash of vinegar to help balance out the strong flavor if you feel like you need it.

How to Make Stock

Homemade stock is something you should always have on hand. It is so easy to make and the flavor and health benefits in homemade stock is beyond anything boxed or canned stock could ever promise, plus it's much cheaper to make it yourself rather than buying it.

To make chicken stock, I've gotten the best "gelling" results using a 3 lb. pack of chicken wings. You can find them for about $5 on sale. Or, freeze the bones and scraps from a whole chicken (or turkey) and save it for stock. You can really add any amount of any other ingredients to it. I typically save the ends and scraps from my carrots and celery whenever I use it, and I'll save the celery root end and leaves as well. Then, I'll add a couple more whole unpeeled carrots, a couple onions, and a whole head of garlic cut in half. 

If you're fancy, you can make a sachet of herbs, but you really don't have to do that since everything will get strained anyway. I always just toss in a couple sprigs of rosemary, a handful of parsley, several thyme sprigs, and a bunch of sage. I grow all of them in my garden, so I always have them fresh on hand. Do not use dried or processed herbs for stock.

Get yourself the biggest stock pot you can find - it doesn't have to be fancy - and place all of your ingredients in, covered completely in cold water. Once it comes to a very gentle boil, reduce heat to maintain a simmer for 8 hours. During that time, scrape the fat off the top if you want, but it will all rise to the top and harden once chilled, so you can always take care of it then. Once the 8 hours are up, set a mesh sieve over a large bowl, and line it with a flour sack kitchen towel. Pour the stock through the towel and sieve to strain it, then chill immediately. Discard the chicken bones and vegetable pulp. All of the nutrients and flavor has been extracted, so there's no use for it (if you compost, you can absolutely add them to your compost bin or pile). 

Use refrigerated stock within 7-10 days. They say stock will freeze for up to 6 months, but I've pulled frozen stock out and used it after over a year and it was exactly the same as the day it went in. 

Noodles

The greatest garage sale purchase I ever made was my Marcato Atlas 150 pasta machine. I believe I paid $5 for it, and I've gotten so much use out of it. Fresh pasta is life changing. Making pasta dough is something that's all about feel. Once you've made it successfully a couple times, you'll be able to feel when the dough is too hydrated and sticky or too dry and tough. I always go with the formula of 3/4 cup of flour and a pinch of salt for each large egg, and that makes one serving when the pasta is part of the main dish, like fettuccine Alfredo or spaghetti. Since the noodles are just one component of this recipe, a one egg dough is the perfect amount. 

Keep in mind that things like humidity and temperature will affect the hydration of your dough, and not all eggs are exactly the same size, so you'll always want to start with less flour than you think you'll need and add more as you go. You can always add more, but once it's it, it's in. You can sometimes save a tough dough with a teaspoon or two of water, but it's much easier to get it right the first time. 

When rolling out the dough after resting, use a woven lint-free cotton kitchen towel to let the dough rest on (you do not want to use a bar mop or terry cloth-style towel for this). The dough will not stick to it, and it will help slightly dry out the surface of the dough to help create that "leathery" skin that helps it from sticking to itself. If you feel like the dough is too sticky at any point, sprinkle with a bit of flour or let it rest on the towel. Those flour sacks we talked about in the Stock section are perfect dough resting spots. 

Now, if you don't have a pasta machine, you can always roll out the dough by hand, but it will never get as thin and even. Feel free to cook dry noodles separately and add to the soup once they reach al dente.