Chicken Noodle Soup in a Pressure Cooker

In February, in the Midwest, why wait until someone is sick to make a delicious chicken noodle soup?  So fast, easy, and so good!  This is the best chicken noodle soup that I’ve made at home.  I call the chicken stock that it makes “liquid gold”.  

This was the very first thing that I’d made in the pressure cooker.  I was sold!  In fact, the handle broke on my pressure cooker this morning.  What a bummer!  Initially, I was just going to order a new one, but since I’m trying to generate less trash...i found the replacement part and it should be here in a few days.  As I’ve mentioned, I have a tiny kitchen and need all of my “equipment” to work very hard!

This soup is great to make with leftover pasta.  Otherwise, cook the pasta first, then the chicken with half of the veggies (carrots and celery), water and herbs.  It’s a “one pot meal” and is very quick to make because you can prep for the next step while the pressure cooker is working.  Do not add salt until just before serving.  Soup is made in a few easy steps:

1. Cook the pasta (al dente) and drain it.  It’ll cook more as you heat the soup.  Discard this water (or, better yet, let it cool and water your plants with it).
2. Cook the chicken in the water with half of the carrots, celery, the water, herbs, sugar, and soup base in the pressure cooker (20-30 minutes).  Note: Do not cut up these carrots and celery.  It will make it much easier to remove them after cooking.  After releasing pressure, take the chicken and veggies out of the pressure cooker. Discard these veggies as they are overcooked and mushy.   You could add half of an onion to the stock, if you’d like.
3. While the chicken is cooking, chop up the carrots and celery for the final soup.
4. Add the chopped celery and carrots to the stock.  Bring to a boil.  Note: While the veggies are cooking, remove the chicken from the bones.  Discard the bones and skin. Turn heat down to medium.  Add the cut up chicken and the pasta.
5. Taste.  Add salt, if necessary.  If you want more liquid, add water and more chicken soup base.
6. Serve!  You’ll need a large ladle, as good as this is.

Ingredients:

• 1 whole chicken, uncooked.  You can remove the skin before cooking, if you’d like.  I don’t remove it until after cooking.
• 8-10 carrots.  
• 6-8 stalks of celery.
• 2 quarts of tap water.
• 1 tsp. chicken soup base (or bouillon).  I bought the soup base at Penzey’s Spices.
• 1 tbsp. dried herbs (I use basil, oregano, chives, pepper, cayenne pepper mixture).  I don’t ad salt until the very end.
• 1 tsp. sugar.
• 2 cups cooked egg noodles (or other noodles).

You don’t need a pressure cooker, if you don’t have one, but you would have to cook the chicken for longer and the stock will not be the same!

My friend, Rene, asked for this recipe.  He's had a pressure cooker for several years, but was a "pressure cooker virgin".  He said that he might need to call as he was makoing it, but he didn't, as it's pretty straight forward.  I couldn't believe that I didn't have this posted earlier.  Sorry about that!