Sunday, September 20, 2009

Chicken and Noodles

Chicken and Noodles is a dish that has a lot of meaning in my family in so many different ways. It's the dish that my brother and I both request for birthday dinners (and for those of you who don't know, my brother and I share a birthday) and it is a dish that we both love so it was a no brainer for our mom to fix for both of us as we were growing and then into adulthood.

Chicken and Noodles take on a whole new meaning within my own family as Fred has never jumped on board the Chicken and Noodle train. I don't know if it's because he is not from the midwest/Iowa, but he doesn't understand the whole chicken and noodles over mashed potatoes or even eating just a big bowl of the noodles. Too bad for him. So over the last 22 years, he has had to "tolerate" the dinner where this is served. My family kids him quite a bit over it as my hubby isn't known to shy away from food except for a few things.

Guess what is on the menu tonight? LOL

I make an awesome pot of Chicken and Noodles and I think my secret is to use chicken broth and water to cook the chicken. I also use chicken breasts on the bone and chop up a bunch of celery, leaves and all and onion and add that to the pot. (SIDE NOTE: Those four HUGE chicken breasts....$3.91 for the pack. When Hy-Vee has them on sale for 77 cents a pound, I stock up.)





Once the chicken cooked, I take the pieces out of the broth, cool it and pick the meat off the bone. I usually cook more than I need to be used in a second meal.

I then bring the chicken broth back up to a boil, add my frozen Reame's noodles (no homemade for me, these noodles are great and they save a tremendous amount of MY time) to the broth, cook according to directions and then the last 5 minutes, I add the chicken meat back into the pot and there you have it. A big batch of yummy Chicken and Noodles.

A dish that invokes many memories and emotions within my family.

Hope everyone had a good weekend. Mine was quite surreal.

2 comments:

~becky said...

Holy Canoli that looks good!

Janet said...

Your recipe sounds easy and I'm sure is great! There is no better comfort food than chicken and noodles over mashed potatoes.

Chicken and noodles is also a special dish in our family. My husband's big extended family has a tradition of serving chicken and noodles with potatoes at Christmas every year. When his grandma passed away a few years back, we all learned how to make her recipe. It's very similar to yours (well, she used to make the noodles from scratch!) except we cook it in a crock pot. At Christmas, we have 4-5 crock pots lined up, filled to the brim with chicken and noodles!