Join me, I'm making soup!

Fall weather! Cooler temperatures! That means soup to me. I love soup. I do think I could eat it everyday. Especially homemade soup.

I decided to make homemade chicken noodle soup.

So come with me, into the kitchen and lets make soup together.

I did not have enough white flour but I did have a whole bag of Whole Wheat flour so I used 1 cup of each. Two eggs and a bit of water. See my yellow bowl? I love these bowls! I have all 4 pyrex nesting bowls and they are old. I cooked with these when I was a little girl and my mom let me have them several years ago.








After mixing the eggs and water into the flour you knead the dough for about 5 minutes and then it looks like this. This has to rest for 30 minutes to relax the gluten. The gluten gets tired after all the kneading so we give it a little break. You could oil the top so it doesn't dry out. I don't.







My pasta machine. This is not necessary to make noodles but I like the uniformity of the noodles. And it is easier than hand rolling and cutting.









This is the dough after it has gone through the rollers a couple of times. Flour it well or it shall stick to the rollers and then get inside and under and there is no way to get it out without a lot of cursing.

You should have your pot of salted water going by now. Do this before you roll out your dough.







Now it is time to cut the noodles. Flour well, use the cutter rollers and crank it through.












This is what it looks like out of the cutters. I hold it over the pot of boiling water and use my kitchen scizzors to cut to approx size.










Boiling happily away in my copper pot. I don't cook them very long then I drain them with a slotted spoon and put them in a bowl. They will be cooked again in the soup.










That's the noodles. Easy wasn't it?

The recipe
Egg noodles
1 cup white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
a pinch or 2 of salt
2 eggs
1/4 cup water.

Mix flours and salt. I beat up the eggs a little bit first then pour into the center of the flour. I use a fork to work much of the flour in and sprinkle water as I go along. You may need more or less. Work it into a ball and knead till smooth, about 5 min. Let dough rest for 30 min. Roll out as thin or thick as you like. They do puff up a little when cooked so keep that in mind. Let rest again for about 10 min and then roll up and slice. Keep things floured up so they don't stick. Cut these slices into noodle size. When using a pasta machine you take about a tablespoon or so, roll it into a snake, flour and send through on the thickest setting, '0' on my machine. Send through 1 and 2. I don't like them any thinner than that.

NOTE:
I did not care for the whole wheat noodles. It tasted a little dusty for lack of a better word. They were not awful but I might not do it again.

Chicken soup
There is never really a recipe for me. I buy these prepared roasted chickens at Albertsons. I love them and they last us about 2 days. When we are done picking at them I throw them in the soup pot with some onions, celery, peppercorns, garlic, bay leaf and carrots. Really whatever I have. After I've boiled the hell out of it I let it cool, strain and ditch the veggies and pick the meat off the chicken.

If you do this one day and refrig the stock all the fat comes to the surface and you just scrape it off. I take this stock and throw in some more onions, carrots, celery, whatever, let it cook a little. Salt and pepper it. I always use the powdered chicken bouillion as well. Taste it. Then throw in the chicken and noodles.