How To Make Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

The best type of noodles for chicken noodle soup.
When choosing the best type of noodle for chicken noodle soup, wide egg noodles are the perfect choice. They hold their own against the chicken and the vegetables, while simultaneously adding their own rich body to the soup. If you’re in a pinch, you can use whatever thick noodle you have on hand, but we highly recommend egg noodles for this classic recipe.

The secret to the most flavorful chicken noodle soup.

Browning the chicken in the pot before adding the stock, water, and aromatics boosts the deep, rich flavors that we want to create in the broth. And keeping the liquid at a bare simmer (with just a few tiny bubbles breaking the surface every now and then) throughout the entire process ensures the chicken, vegetables, and noodles will cook gently, coaxing out maximum flavor while moderating the broth’s reduction.

All about the chicken.
You can make chicken noodle soup with any combination of bone-in, skin-on chicken parts, but if you have the choice, we highly recommend using a breast, a thigh, and a drumstick (basically, half a chicken, broken down). A combination of white and dark meat is ideal because it gives you that gorgeous shredded white meat in the finished soup with the benefit of the added depth of flavor that comes from stewing the dark meat for an additional 40 minutes after the white meat is finished cooking. Don’t be tempted to leave the chicken breast in for the full hour; it will overcook and turn tough and dry, even when it’s floating in broth.

Storage.
If you have leftovers, we strongly suggest (okay, BEG) that you store the noodles separately from the broth. If they’re stored together, the noodles will soak up the liquid and turn to mush–and there won’t be any broth left. If you’d like to cook this soup in advance, the same recommendation applies, though if you’re making it ahead of time, we’d recommend skipping the noodles completely. You can add them into the broth when you reheat the soup, and they should be fully cooked in just 5 minutes.