Last week I bought a whole chicken for the first time at Trader Joes. After checking out several different ways of making the soup (including stock from scratch), I settled on a recipe from Food Network.
It was pretty easy, but there was a lot to do. I started making the stock around lunch and the soup was done at 4:30.
I thought making stock would be complicated... but its not. Just put the chicken and veggies in a pot, boil, and simmer.
I let the flavors mingle for about two hours. The kitchen smelled so good!
Once the stock is done, then you pull apart the chicken with your hands!! Reminds me of a dissection but less gross :-)
I tossed the rest of the stock ingredients down the disposal (makes me want to start composting) and chopped up fresh veggies for the soup. Chopping these veggies was the most time consuming part of the whole deal. I never liked chopping veggies... I also cut my finger mincing garlic :/ (I couldn't find our garlic press so I had to do it by hand)
Cooked veggies, added back stock and simmered...
The last step was adding the noodles and the shredded chicken:
I followed the recipe closely except for these things: I used dried thyme instead of fresh*, added cayenne pepper for a kick, and had a 4 1/2 lb. chicken, so I made 3 quarts of stock instead of 2.
I can say without a doubt that I prefer this homemade chicken noodle soup to soup I could buy out. It just tasted like real food. And healthy... no preservatives, good veggies, fresh. Yum.
Cost Comparison:
The quality was definitely above canned soup... so there is just no comparison there. The level of soup quality is more like take out, or deli quality.
Chutzpah Deli sells chicken noodle soup with fresh chicken and fresh veggies for $4.50. (And if you live in Northern VA and haven't tried Chutzpah, they have great food!)
Some of my prices are Wegman's and others are Trader Joe's:
TJ Whole Chicken $1.29/lb., totaling $6.02
TJ Carrots $ .89
W Yellow Onions $1.00
TJ Celery $ .90
W Garlic $1.25
W Thyme $4.49/.7 oz. ... ~$.06 **
W Cayenne Pepper $2.99/oz. ... ~$.20 **
Salt < $.01
Pepper < $.01
(the cost of spices are estimates obviously b/c sometimes I don't really measure them)
Cost = ~ $10.33
# Servings was about 10 (the recipe was only for 4 but my chicken was a pound larger and I made 3 quarts of stock so we had more soup)
Cost per serving = ~ $1.03
It's about a quarter of the price, but it does take time. To me, it was totally worth it and it was great to have several meals out of it! Plus waaaaaaay less sodium and zero preservatives... and that lovely sense of accomplishment.
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