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which_chick) wrote2024-01-01 09:30 pm
which_chick) wrote2024-01-01 09:30 pm
Entry tags:
Noodle Soup In Pictures
What it says on the tin, folks. This is How To Make Noodle Soup (from scratch), illustrated by me.
This is meatless turkey noodle soup made from turkey stock. I use home-made turkey stock that I generate out of turkey carcasses following holiday-ish events in which a turkey is cooked. You can probably also use chicken stock or bought stock (but bought stock is generally not as good and I find that it should be fortified with Better-than-Boullion to taste) but home-made turkey stock is what I use.
If you would like to try making your own stock but do not know how to do that, it's basically cooking down a pretty decent amount of chicken/turkey bones and skin once most of the decent meat has been removed. You cannot just use "breast" bones because the leg bones and gristle and skin and stuff contribute to the silky delicious mouthfeel of the stock and make it kinda "gel" when it's cold. Boiling down chicken thighs (with skin) will do ya fine, though, and you can take the soft well-cooked thigh meat and make enchiladas or something with it.
Anyway, let's get to it. Because of timestamps on these photos, I can tell you that it took an hour start to finish with me stopping for pictures and shit.
Chop, as for soup, a medium onion and two stalks of celery minus the weird tops and the wide white bottoms. I save the wrong parts of celery for snacking on while cooking. Add a big knob of butter to the chopped veggies and saute until soft in the pan you're going to make the soup in. This should be a pretty decent-sized pan. I'm using my 6 quart Reverware copper-bottomed stock pot, but you use what you've got, noting that you should probably be in the 6 quart size range for this not-a-recipe soup rubric.
Here's what it should look like when you start:
While celery and onion are cooking, take 2 of your quart freezer bags o' stock out of the freezer and set them in a bowl (in case of leaks) to warm up a little.
Still while the onions and celery are cooking in the butter, swish things around a few times, kind of be present so nothing scorches. This can happen at a low-medium heat if you are easily distracted or have trouble multi-tasking. Hell, if you're just a fucking hot mess, saute this shit and get it to translucent onions and then TURN OFF THE HEAT while you do the other steps. You're the best judge of what you can handle, so make appropriate choices for you.
Next, peel and cut up two carrots. Do not saute these, they will get too soft and gross. Just put them in a pile on the cutting board until the onion/celery stuff is ready.
Cook the onions/celery until onions are translucent and not crunchy anymore. Taste if not sure.
When the onions/celery are ready, run your (closed) bags of stock under hot water so that the ziplock part turns loose of the frozen stock part. Then open them and squish out the frozen square of stock plus all the drippy melted stock onto the finished onion/celery mix.
Then, put your chopped carrots and several (three?) bay leaves on top of the frozen stock squares. It should look like this:
On medium heat, let the stock melt itself down. Leave the carrots on top, it will help keep them from getting mushy. This step does not take a lot of involvement from you but if you are worried you can swish it a few times. Don't turn the heat too high, we are going to use this melting time to get the dough for the noodles made and kneaded.
In a medium bowl, measure out two cups of flour, 3 eggs, like a dollop (1 Tbsp) olive oil, and maybe an eggshell of water if you feel like it. And some salt. Quarter teaspoon? I dunno, I just eyeball it. Not a ton of salt, but some. All the ingredients in the bowl look like this:
Using a fork, stir all these ingredients together. It'll make a shitty looking rough dough that honestly does not resemble noodles in the slightest.
At this point, you can wad the dough into a ball (more or less) and remove it from the bowl. Turn it out onto your kneading surface and knead it until it is smooth.
Here is Not Smooth dough. This dough needs more work:
Here is Smooth dough. This dough is ready to rest:
When the dough is smooth, put the dough mixing bowl over it and let it rest for a few minutes while you get ready to roll the dough.
This is the dumbest picture in this set of pictures:
I use a pasta machine to roll out my noodle dough. Pasta is noodles. This is noodles. It is NOT WRONG to use a pasta machine if you have one. Since my pasta machine comes with a shitty clamp to attach it to the counter, I do not use the shitty clamp and instead use one from my toolbox. Here's my setup:
Make sure you have enough room to turn the pasta machine crank despite the clamp, if you are using an aftermarket clamp solution.
If you're just rolling out your dough old school, get that set up too.
It is easiest to do the noodle dough if you divide the noodle dough into 4 pieces.
Do each piece by itself. First, mash it (as shown in picture above) into a flattish thing with your hands and then pasta-machine or roll it out to the desired thickness. Once you've reached the desired thickness for your noodle dough, hang the dough sheet on a Pasta Drying Rack (lol, as if you own one of these) OR the stove handle.
If you have a woodstove running, your noodles will dry very quickly.
Repeat for all your noodle dough pieces. Now, with all your sheets done, you are ready to bring the soup to a rolling boil. Taste and season (first draft) the stock with salt and pepper. Increase heat to medium high. Wait for soup to come to a boil. Like, a real boil.
Cut the noodles into noodle sizes, and here I am going to recycle a picture from before because I thought I remembered to take a noodle cutting picture but I did not. I use a pizza cutter to roll-cut the noodles. It's way easier than a knife. Use the pizza cutter.
Drop the noodles into the pot of boiling soup, a few at a time, while stirring. It's important to dribble the noodles in a few at a time because if you grab the noodles hard they will stick together and if you dump them all in all at once, they will stick together. A few at a time, while stirring. Allow soup to return to boil before doing next batch.
You may feel there are 'enough' noodles before you use up all the noodle dough. This happens sometimes and it is OK. Also, your leftover noodle dough is not wasted if you don't want it to be. To save leftover noodle dough, put it on a smallish sheet of parchment paper, roll it up like a scroll, and tuck it into a ziplock bag. (Be sure to label and date!) You can then freeze your dough for Nearly-Instant noodles at a later date.
When all noodles are in, cook soup ten or so minutes until noodles are soft. Stir, making sure nothing sticks. Adjust seasoning (likely more salt and pepper). When noodles are soft enough to suit you (or, #ProTip, a little less-soft than you really want) turn off heat.
Serve noodle soup:
So delicious.
This is meatless turkey noodle soup made from turkey stock. I use home-made turkey stock that I generate out of turkey carcasses following holiday-ish events in which a turkey is cooked. You can probably also use chicken stock or bought stock (but bought stock is generally not as good and I find that it should be fortified with Better-than-Boullion to taste) but home-made turkey stock is what I use.
If you would like to try making your own stock but do not know how to do that, it's basically cooking down a pretty decent amount of chicken/turkey bones and skin once most of the decent meat has been removed. You cannot just use "breast" bones because the leg bones and gristle and skin and stuff contribute to the silky delicious mouthfeel of the stock and make it kinda "gel" when it's cold. Boiling down chicken thighs (with skin) will do ya fine, though, and you can take the soft well-cooked thigh meat and make enchiladas or something with it.
Anyway, let's get to it. Because of timestamps on these photos, I can tell you that it took an hour start to finish with me stopping for pictures and shit.
Chop, as for soup, a medium onion and two stalks of celery minus the weird tops and the wide white bottoms. I save the wrong parts of celery for snacking on while cooking. Add a big knob of butter to the chopped veggies and saute until soft in the pan you're going to make the soup in. This should be a pretty decent-sized pan. I'm using my 6 quart Reverware copper-bottomed stock pot, but you use what you've got, noting that you should probably be in the 6 quart size range for this not-a-recipe soup rubric.
Here's what it should look like when you start:
While celery and onion are cooking, take 2 of your quart freezer bags o' stock out of the freezer and set them in a bowl (in case of leaks) to warm up a little.
Still while the onions and celery are cooking in the butter, swish things around a few times, kind of be present so nothing scorches. This can happen at a low-medium heat if you are easily distracted or have trouble multi-tasking. Hell, if you're just a fucking hot mess, saute this shit and get it to translucent onions and then TURN OFF THE HEAT while you do the other steps. You're the best judge of what you can handle, so make appropriate choices for you.
Next, peel and cut up two carrots. Do not saute these, they will get too soft and gross. Just put them in a pile on the cutting board until the onion/celery stuff is ready.
Cook the onions/celery until onions are translucent and not crunchy anymore. Taste if not sure.
When the onions/celery are ready, run your (closed) bags of stock under hot water so that the ziplock part turns loose of the frozen stock part. Then open them and squish out the frozen square of stock plus all the drippy melted stock onto the finished onion/celery mix.
Then, put your chopped carrots and several (three?) bay leaves on top of the frozen stock squares. It should look like this:
On medium heat, let the stock melt itself down. Leave the carrots on top, it will help keep them from getting mushy. This step does not take a lot of involvement from you but if you are worried you can swish it a few times. Don't turn the heat too high, we are going to use this melting time to get the dough for the noodles made and kneaded.
In a medium bowl, measure out two cups of flour, 3 eggs, like a dollop (1 Tbsp) olive oil, and maybe an eggshell of water if you feel like it. And some salt. Quarter teaspoon? I dunno, I just eyeball it. Not a ton of salt, but some. All the ingredients in the bowl look like this:
Using a fork, stir all these ingredients together. It'll make a shitty looking rough dough that honestly does not resemble noodles in the slightest.
At this point, you can wad the dough into a ball (more or less) and remove it from the bowl. Turn it out onto your kneading surface and knead it until it is smooth.
Here is Not Smooth dough. This dough needs more work:
Here is Smooth dough. This dough is ready to rest:
When the dough is smooth, put the dough mixing bowl over it and let it rest for a few minutes while you get ready to roll the dough.
This is the dumbest picture in this set of pictures:
I use a pasta machine to roll out my noodle dough. Pasta is noodles. This is noodles. It is NOT WRONG to use a pasta machine if you have one. Since my pasta machine comes with a shitty clamp to attach it to the counter, I do not use the shitty clamp and instead use one from my toolbox. Here's my setup:
Make sure you have enough room to turn the pasta machine crank despite the clamp, if you are using an aftermarket clamp solution.
If you're just rolling out your dough old school, get that set up too.
It is easiest to do the noodle dough if you divide the noodle dough into 4 pieces.
Do each piece by itself. First, mash it (as shown in picture above) into a flattish thing with your hands and then pasta-machine or roll it out to the desired thickness. Once you've reached the desired thickness for your noodle dough, hang the dough sheet on a Pasta Drying Rack (lol, as if you own one of these) OR the stove handle.
If you have a woodstove running, your noodles will dry very quickly.
Repeat for all your noodle dough pieces. Now, with all your sheets done, you are ready to bring the soup to a rolling boil. Taste and season (first draft) the stock with salt and pepper. Increase heat to medium high. Wait for soup to come to a boil. Like, a real boil.
Cut the noodles into noodle sizes, and here I am going to recycle a picture from before because I thought I remembered to take a noodle cutting picture but I did not. I use a pizza cutter to roll-cut the noodles. It's way easier than a knife. Use the pizza cutter.
Drop the noodles into the pot of boiling soup, a few at a time, while stirring. It's important to dribble the noodles in a few at a time because if you grab the noodles hard they will stick together and if you dump them all in all at once, they will stick together. A few at a time, while stirring. Allow soup to return to boil before doing next batch.
You may feel there are 'enough' noodles before you use up all the noodle dough. This happens sometimes and it is OK. Also, your leftover noodle dough is not wasted if you don't want it to be. To save leftover noodle dough, put it on a smallish sheet of parchment paper, roll it up like a scroll, and tuck it into a ziplock bag. (Be sure to label and date!) You can then freeze your dough for Nearly-Instant noodles at a later date.
When all noodles are in, cook soup ten or so minutes until noodles are soft. Stir, making sure nothing sticks. Adjust seasoning (likely more salt and pepper). When noodles are soft enough to suit you (or, #ProTip, a little less-soft than you really want) turn off heat.
Serve noodle soup:
So delicious.