Quick Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

This homemade chicken noodle soup is ready in under 15 minutes. The key is a couple of secret ingredients.

How Chicken Noodle Soup Got Its Name

Campbell’s had a canned condensed soup called Noodle with Chicken Soup. Weird, right? That soup with that weird name was around for awhile but never became popular. Then a radio announcer made a mistake on air and called it Chicken Noodle Soup. People suddenly got excited about this “new” soup with its cool new name and sales skyrocketed. The name stuck and came to be applied to canned versions and homemade versions alike.

I’m so glad that the name and the type of soup were around in my childhood. I have vivid memories of eating homemade chicken noodle soup at my Baba’s kitchen table. She made it so often that her house smelled like chicken soup even when there wasn’t any in sight.

Video: Making Quick Chicken Noodle Soup

How To Make Quick Chicken Noodle Soup

These days I don’t often make a big batch of slow-simmered chicken noodle soup like my Baba did. Instead, when one of us is sick or in need of comfort, I tend to make up a quicker version.

For this soup to be done so quickly, you also have to cut the chicken into small pieces before adding it to the broth. The small pieces of chicken cook faster. You also want to make sure your noodles are quick cooking.

So, to get things started off quickly, you want to put your chicken stock into a microwave-safe bowl and microwave for 6 minutes to get it hot. While the broth is heating up, you’ll get started on the stove. Butter and oil goes into a large pot and then you’ll add the carrots as soon as they are ready.

Chop the onion and add to the pot. Mince your garlic and add that as well, along with your seasonings. By now, your microwave should be beeping with your hot chicken broth. Carefully pour the broth into your pot on the stovetop. Put the lid on and increase the stove to high.

Chop your chicken into those small pieces and add them once the broth is boiling. Reduce to a simmer and cook until the chicken is cooked though. Increase the heat again, add the noodles, and bring to a boil. Since we need something quick cooking, I got egg noodles with a 3 minute cook time.

When your noodles are cooked to al dente, you can remove the bay leaf and serve. This chicken noodle soup recipe is so quick that you can handle it even when feeling under the weather.

How To Get Delicious Flavor In 15 Minutes

There’s a little trick that makes this soup delicious in such a short time. It has to do with butter.

My Baba’s chicken soup contained a bit of rendered chicken fat which gave it a rich full flavor. I never have rendered chicken fat on hand. Instead, I saute the onions and carrots for this soup in butter. The butter flavor adds so much richness to the soup.

The butter also makes up for something. When doing a slow-simmered soup, all kinds of flavor gets extracted from the chicken. The fat and cartilage doesn’t have time to render and deepen the flavor in the same way. The butter helps a lot with this. The result is a rich and flavorful broth that you would swear had taken hours to make.

What Kind Of Chicken To Use For Chicken Noodle Soup

If you’re doing the slow-simmered method for chicken soup, then you want to either use a whole chicken, or chicken pieces. I find that the chicken leg quarters are usually very reasonably priced.

You simmer the chicken with other flavorful ingredients for a long time (an hour or two). Then remove the chicken and let it cool. Then separate out the meat from the fat and the skin. Add the meat to the soup and discard the rest.

For the quick chicken soup below, I buy boneless skinless chicken thighs. Boneless and skinless is really helpful because you don’t need to ever spend time removing skin or bones. Using thighs instead of breasts adds a ton of flavor, and the chicken is so moist in the soup.

You can use chicken breast if you really love it and that’s your thing, but it won’t be nearly as good.

What Kind Of Noodles To Use For Chicken Noodle Soup

I mentioned above that for a quick soup, you want a quick-cooking noodle. There are “fine egg noodles” at the grocery store (“fine” refers to how finely they’re cut, as opposed to “wide” egg noodles). The fine egg noodles cook in 3-4 minutes.

Any pasta shape with a similarly short cooking time will work for your quick chicken soup. If you’re not making a quick soup and don’t care about the time, then I’d go with wide egg noodles for sure. They’re my favorite and don’t take that much longer to cook for this easy recipe.

Should You Cook Noodles Separately For Soup?

It depends.

If you’re trying to be speedy, then cooking the noodles right in the soup, as I’ve done in the recipe below, is the quickest option.

However, if you have leftovers from the meal, the noodles will continue to soak up liquid while the soup is in the fridge. You’ll end up with something more like noodle stew.

So if you’re making enough to have leftovers, cook and store the noodles separately from the soup. Then just add them in when you’re reheating the soup.

Is Chicken Noodle Soup Healthy?

Chicken noodle soup is often the first thing we think to have when dealing with a cold, but is it actually healthy? Well, it’s got protein from the chicken, a bit of fiber from the pasta, and vitamins from the carrots. Plus, the hot steamy broth that is so soothing can help break up congestion.

But it can also have a lot of sodium, especially if you’re buying it at the store. I like to start with no or low-sodium stock so that I can have more control over the salt level in my homemade soup.

Another way to boost the health benefits are to add extra vegetables or fresh herbs. You can add extra garlic or add in some celery along with the carrots. Another option is to stir in quick cooking greens like spinach or chopped kale at the end for extra nutrients.

This post originally appeared in September 2014 and was revised and republished in October 2022.