Recipe: Big Family Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

Inexpensive ingredients make this one of my favorites. Since starting to cook for my ever-growing family of 8, I’ve shifted my mindset to big family cooking, meaning my batches have become BIG batches!
Even with what I thought were large meal portions before, I found that with hungry tweens I was running out of what I intended to be for dinner and stealing from what I hoped would be my leftover portion to freeze.
This recipe is flexible and amounts depend on how large a batch you want and what you like to be prominent in your soup. If you like it meaty, use more chicken and less vegetables. If the noodles are your weakness, add extra noodles and not so much chicken!
Slow cooking: You could make this recipe in a crockpot or slow cooker, but I prefer to make it on the stove over low-medium heat and have it going for several hours. I find that even my large crockpot doesn’t hold enough for my BIG family soup batches.

Storing your big batches of soup: If you intend to make a double batch to freeze, have enough containers on hand to freeze in either whole-family size batches or individual portions.

These days, I’ve actually switched over to freezing my homemade soups in wide-mouth glass mason jars with screw on plastic lids instead of the included metal ones. I put these into my deep freezer in the garage and label with masking tape (include the name and date made).

Recipe: Big Family Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

Ingredients:
1 pack of 6 chicken breasts, cooked and chopped into bite-size pieces
1 can corn
1 bag of frozen okra
2 pounds of carrots, peeled and sliced into coins
2 stalks of celery (2 full celery plants)
1 onion, peeled and diced
1 bag of egg noodles, uncooked
Water
Chicken broth
Garlic powder
Salt to taste
Directions:
1. Add chicken to a tall stock pot.
2. Add enough broth and water to cover chicken and turn heat on to low.
3. Chop and add all veggies. Pour in chicken broth and water until liquid level is much higher than the veggies. Cook until veggies are tender.
4. Add garlic powder and salt to taste.
5. About 30 minutes before dinner time, add the egg noodles and turn up the heat to medium-high. Cook until noodles are soft.
Variations:
Try different veggies, such as broccoli or cauliflower.
Use turkey in place of chicken breast.
Substitute rice for egg noodles.
Add corn starch to the broth for a thicker soup.