Chicken Soup

Ingredients

• 2 chicken breasts
• 1 onion
• 2 carrots
• 2 celery stalks
• 32 oz chicken stock or broth
• pasta

Method

Poach the chicken breasts in the stock until cooked through — roughly 15 minutes once the liquid reaches a gentle simmer. The broth-based approach here matters: you're using the poaching liquor as your base, so flavour runs directly into it. Remove the breasts and shred them into bite-sized pieces once they're cool enough to handle. This isn't a long braise — two hours of hard simmering later will destroy the meat's texture, so keep the poach brief.

Dice the onion, carrots, and celery into roughly equal 8mm pieces. Heat a little fat in the pot (use the reserved chicken fat if you've skimmed it, otherwise oil) and sweat the aromatic-vegetables over medium heat for five minutes until the onion turns translucent and the carrot's raw edge softens slightly. Don't let them colour — you want them yielding and mild. Add the poaching stock back in along with the shredded chicken.

Bring to a rolling simmering boil, then drop the heat to the lowest setting that maintains a steady, quiet bubble. This dissolves and distributes gelatin from the bones and creates a cleaner flavour than aggressive boiling would. Taste at 15 minutes and season with salt and pepper — hold back on hot sauce and other assertive flavours until the end so you can calibrate properly. The soup will concentrate slightly as liquid evaporates, so underseasoning now is safer.

When you're ready to serve, bring the pot back to a rolling boil and add dried pasta or fresh egg noodles. Cook to al-dente — tender with a slight resistance at the centre, roughly 8 minutes for dried shapes, 2–3 for fresh. Stir occasionally to prevent sticking. The starch from the pasta will cloud the broth slightly, which is fine; it signals the soup has body. Finish with a squeeze of lemon if the dish tastes flat, or a dash of hot sauce if you want heat. Serve immediately while the pasta still has texture.