Chicken and Noodles

I doubt that there is anything that I cook that I like more than homemade chicken and noodles. I took my very last chicken out of the freezer before I went to bed, and put it in my large Crockpot, covered it and turned it on low, and let it cook overnight. Here is what it looked like in the morning:



I removed the carcass from the broth and am letting it cool for a while here:



Here is the broth:



which I then strained to get any stray bits out:



Now I'm ready to take the meat off of the bones:



Here it is all separated:



I don't waste what's left. I take all of the fat and gristle, and using kitchen shears, cut into the bones to expose the marrow, cover all of that with more water and cook if for a few hours to make a nice stock for soup. THEN, I discard what's left:



Now it's time to make the noodles. I had about 1 gallon of broth, so I am using 4 eggs:



For each egg, I add 1/2 teaspoon of salt, so for this batch, there are 2 teaspoons:



Stir that all together well with a fork:



Add enough white (I use unbleached) flour to make a fairly firm dough and turn it onto a floured surface:



Here is what it looked like after 5 minutes of kneading. You want it to be pretty stiff, so it won't stick when you roll it out.



Divide into 4 pieces:



Make each piece into a nice little round thing by tucking the cut edges under. Set these aside and let them rest for a few minutes:



Using plenty of flour so the dough does not stick, roll each piece out as thinly as you can:



You can use a flat spatula to run under the dough to make sure it doesn't stick, and turn the dough over a few times, using more flour, as you roll it out:



Here is the first piece, all rolled out. I spread some flour on top, and will put that into the soup with the noodles, because I like the soup to be nice and thick:



There are several ways to cut the noodles, but I like to use a pizza cutter:



Drop the noodles, a few at a time into the boiling broth:



After all the noodles are in, then add the diced chicken meat, cook it all together for just a few minutes, and now it's time to season it. You will have to do this to taste, but I added 1/2 more teaspoon of salt, a few cranks of freshly ground black pepper and this much ground poultry seasoning: (that is a plastic teaspoon)



And here it is all ready to eat!



This post is linked up to Simple Lives Thursday!