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Chicken noodle soup, a soup derived from chicken and noodles. It is a comfort to many, an elixir to the sick, and a remedy for the cold or very recently chilly. And today, we're going to see just how far we can push the medium as I try to make 10 levels of chicken tacos noodle soup chicken noodle soup 10 levels of chicken noodle soup. A big thank you to Cook Unity for sponsoring this episode. Cook Unity continues to be my go-to meal while editing an episode, taking a break from filming, or just craving something delicious and healthy on a weeknight. If you need a reliable meal in the middle of a busy day or for a tasty dinner, having Cook Unity
meals ready to grab in your fridge is a game-changer. You get restaurant-quality meals by award-winning chefs delivered fresh to your door. Today's lunch is a cheesy beef and black bean chili with herby cornbread by Chef James Grody. Head to the link in the description now to try Cook Unity and get 50% off your first order of chef-made meals delivered fresh to your doorstep. Use code Babish to try it out. Why is chicken noodle is the thing that Big Pharma doesn't want you to know is that chicken immediately and inconvertibly cures all diseases. It's I did I did my own research. And I'm I'm, you know, presenting my findings here now with you
today. I also made my own disclaimer for the bottom of this um just for safety. That's that's for the best. You should keep that there. Anyway, level one. Level one chicken noodle soup is something probably best suited for the infirmed or a child who needs more salt in their diet. Lipton noodle soup. A soup mix with real chicken flavor broth. You might notice that the word flavor is very small to throw you off the scent that this contains no chicken. The these kinds of noodles only cook up either massively undercooked or soft
enough to swallow without chewing. You decide. And I have a soft spot for Lipton chicken noodle flavor soup. It's what my mom would make for me when I was sick sometimes. It's it's a very familiar smell and flavor and look. So, I'm going to have a hard time being too mean to this, but I think we can all agree this is probably the lowest expression of chicken noodle soup. Wait. Hold on. This little packet is four servings, which means that if you ate the whole thing, that you would take down more than 100% of your daily sodium. This contains more than all the sodiums you're supposed to eat in a day. And I
don't think I've ever eaten less than one packet. It's a miracle I survived childhood. Now, to make this stuff, we have to bring a frankly incredible four cups of water to the boil. In goes our little packets. All right. Now, that cooks for 5 minutes before serving. There we go. It's beautiful. It doesn't smell the way I remember. It doesn't smell like nothing. Ooh, it mostly tastes like salt and this completely uh imagined chicken flavor. It's like it's like you described the way chicken tastes to somebody and they recreated it in a lab. The noodles are surprisingly not over or undercooked. They're actually not
bad, but they're so small that just sitting in the hot broth for more than a minute, they're already getting soft. Oh, what is that flavor? Something's changed. I remember the smell of this wafting up from the kitchen when I was sick in bed. I remember that. And I can't my face in it. I can barely smell it. It smells like pasta cooking water. That's what it smells like. That is not a comfort the way I remember it being. That is horrible and very worthy of its slot in level one. If you had to guess, what do you think the microplastics in canned soup like this are doing to us? Well, I'm glad you asked that, Brad, because it's about time I came out and said that I am a vehemently pro microplastics. I think that they are here to slowly replace all of the bad
icky gross stuff in this If you've ever seen in there, it's disgusting. And if you look at plastic, it's nice and it lasts longer. Like again, I did my own research. I just say we embrace it. We gra- granted, you know, that's what the Campbell's CEO told me to say. He was trying to take the aim off of what he said about their soup being for poor people. And he wanted to make it more about how great the microplastics are. He gave me so much money to do this research. Level two chicken noodle soup, one that is also a diluted facsimile of the genuine article, but at least one that has a little bit of chicken in it.
Campbell's condensed chicken noodle soup. It's 3:00 in the afternoon on a sick day home from school somewhere. True to its name, Campbell's chicken noodle soup is condensed, so we need to add one can of water. So, something that's confusing to me, as prepared, this makes 2 and 1/2 servings, 20 some-odd ounces of soup. Let's call it 21 oz of soup. And in that entire serving, there's 7 and 1/2 g of protein. For reference, you're probably getting the exact same amount of protein by volume just drinking homemade chicken stock. And this has chunks of chicken in it. So, where's all that protein? Where's it gone? Forget a ladle. Let's just dump this guy in. Okay. And it at least kind of resembles chicken noodle soup. You can see noodles.
You can kind of see some chicken. Also, I don't know whose idea it was to use strands of spaghetti, but they can really go piss up a rope. I don't even think it was ineptitude. I think it was cruelty. I think it was a cold-hearted attempt to make people feel like I don't even deserve this soup if I can't get it in my stupid mouth. The broth is starting to taste like actual chicken. Uh the chicken tastes like uh chicken. I wish it weren't so repulsive to look at these horrible little chunks. As you might imagine, the noodles are complete mush. I can't blame them. They're canned noodles. There's no way they're going to be like a pleasant bouncy texture the way that you want pasta to be. But it doesn't make this any more enjoyable. I was really hoping
this would melt away my proverbial adult snowman and reveal the child inside, but um Nope. That child remains dead with every scoop of spaghetti that I can't pick up with the spoon. Definitely a level two chicken noodle soup. Chunky is a gross word. Why use it to sell food? We've encountered this in past conversations, Brad. You think that chunky is a gross word. However, there's an entire line of soups, Campbell's chunky. There's a candy bar, the Um there's um chunky style uh um puke. I mean, I You know, soup is very pu- puke-like because what is puke but semi-digested food? And what is soup but food that has been sort of semi-digested
for you? It's very it's heavily cooked and it's in a liquid to help it stream right down in there. I did my own research. And that and it's actually perfectly safe to eat puke. They call it Campbell's chunky. And it's up next. Now, it's time to chunk things up with Campbell's chunky, a non-condensed soup. No water necessary, just dump it. Oh, the smell of canned soup. I don't care how tasty it is. It comes out of the can smelling funny. All right. These chunks are all chunked up and ready to chunk. There we go. The broth [snorts] definitely has a deeper, richer flavor. There's lots of lovely chicken fat floating on top of that. Just kind of
hits your tongue, coats your mouth, and just gives you this rounded chicken flavor. So, it d- you know, tastes like chicken. These chicken chunks have been chopped and formed. They are an emulsified product. You see how there's kind of like bubbles formed in it? That's from the chicken meat being effectively liquefied, probably some real chunks of actual chicken thrown in there. The whole thing gets formed, cooked, and then chopped. That's that's my best guess. The chicken has like uh spongy slippery texture to it. It's definitely unpleasant. And it really only tastes like the broth, which is to say that it tastes like chicken. But I d- I feel like it's being flavored by the broth and not the other way around.
The vegetables are mush. The noodles, less mushy than the condensed counterpart and actual, you know, spoon-shaped scoopable noodles like, you know, egg noodles the way that chicken noodle soup's supposed to be. But they're still very soft. Like And again, it's a canned soup. You can't get good noodles out of it. This is a huge improvement, but there's a bitterness to the back end of it. After you eat a bite, it kind of reminds me when I overcook stock. The minerals and the marrow and all and the the not blood, but the some kind of globin leaches out of all the bones, and you end up with this kind of bitter bony flavor. And that's what this has. I think that uh some aspect of it has been cooked to death, and it's given it
this weird bitter back end. Better flavor, better texture, still a far cry from the original. I've definitely drank gallons of this stuff back when I was in college and in my first apartment and needed to eat out of cans to stay alive. But the moment you get to start eating non-canned foods, you forget that this ever existed. Pretty lowly expression of the medium. The very least, it's it's chunky, even if those chunks are chopped and formed. I thought chicken noodle soup and ramen were called different things because they are different things. Where did I go wrong? So many things in this world are called different things, but they aren't different things. You might
call an oven a hot box. You might call um a fireplace a big old hot brick boy building burden. You might call shoes foot gloves. I think you've made an excellent point here today. I think so, too. It's It's cuz I do all my own research. Next up, packaged chicken ramen. It is chicken flavored and there is noodles. So, guess what? It's chicken noodle soup. I don't know why, but ramen that comes in a round puck, I just assume it's going to taste better. Oh my god, there's all them kinds of packets. Why are there two soup bases? All right, this chicken flavor is for sure. This looks like beef.
Oh, no, it's the spice. Okay. Yep. [snorts] I forgot these are spicy. All right, I've got two cups of water at the boil, to which I'm going to add the soup bases. Mix. Let's add our flakes and cook that for 3 and 1/2 minutes. And here it comes. Let's see what ramen does for chicken noodle soup. It's really tasty. Where'd you go? It's definitely an improvement on like top ramen. Ooh, I like the spice. The spice is very welcome. Definitely chicken bouillon flavor, but way better than Lipton stuff. That I don't know what that tasted like, but it wasn't chicken. This tastes like meaty, spicy, tons of herbs and flavors and aromatics. As far as being chicken noodle soup, it is.
Packaged chicken ramen, pretty awesome. Pretty good. I thought chicken noodle soup was supposed to warm your soul. Why then would I eat it refrigerated? Oh, you'd never eat it refrigerated, Bret. I mean, you could, but if you follow the directions on the package, it says to either microwave it or heat it up on the stovetop and then immediately put it in the trash. Oh. Because it's well, stay tuned. Next up, our very first non-shelf stable option, refrigerated chicken noodle soup. Uh most grocery stores have their own brand of this, but by far the most available Panera. Let's see what it tastes like.
All you got to do is heat and eat. I'd hope that this is the same product that they sell in Panera's, but it's a big company, so I'm guessing there's 10 different legal and cost-saving reasons that this is not the exact same formulation. So, let's see what it tastes like. Let's plate it up. Oh, man, that smells weird. That smells really weird. Smells turned. Smells like if I had made this, I'd throw it away. What's going on? All right, let's try some of the broth. [snorts] Ooh, hold on. I can't Oh, it can't be that bad. No way. Really? Okay. Be kind, be open. Ooh. It tastes turned. It tastes off. Hang on, let me I'm I'm going to check the container. No, it's good for another month and a half. Refrigerated
soup that is good for a month and a half. I don't know. The broth has a lot of tang to it. And not in a pleasant way. It's not like lemon. It's like just acidity. I don't know how, but the noodles are better than canned. Because this has been Again, it's been cooked, it's been cooled, it's been stored. These noodles should be sogfest. I don't know what they do to them to make them still have a bit of bite to them, but it can't be, in harmony with nature and God's plan. Got some chunks of actual chicken. Now, it appears to be all breast. I don't see any dark meat. And it tastes and feels like it, cuz it's dry as a bone. Even the broth is just full of shreds of white meat. And what that translates to
is a whole bunch of dry, pulpy texture in your soup. But every bite you take is like because of all this dry chicken. Let's try carrot. Flavor aside, the carrots have no discernible flavor of their own, but they do have a bit of a fresh vegetable bite to them. They taste like they were carrots that were simmered for 45 minutes in a soup. Let me try the celery. Oh. That celery tastes like rotten food. It That's where the flavor's coming from. Ooh, regrettable. Repugnant. This was meant to be a demonstration of refrigerated soup at your local grocer. And maybe Panera's not the way to go.
Maybe go with the store brand version. You're probably going to have a better result than that. The celery in this tastes toxic. And not in a good way, like a Britney Spears song. In a bad way, like it's bad for you. Could you make this version if you don't have a house? It's a very common question. Absolutely. If you have an apartment, um a garage that you're crashing in, a friend's couch, um it just or even outdoors, if you have a burner and a pot, Maybe we should call this soup self-made. Maybe we should call it you didn't build that soup. All right, next up is a very basic homemade chicken noodle soup. No prep, no knife, no strife, no wife, probably, if I had to guess.
Sorry. So, I'm going to use all frozen or pre-prepared ingredients from the grocery store, pre-prepared chicken stock, the works. Now, you might find yourself reaching for that box of Swanson, but this stuff tastes like cat piss. And if you ever drank it by its on its own, you'd know that. But you haven't done that, have you? That's why I'm here. Way better option is Better Than Bouillon. They're not a sponsor today. I'd love for them to be. Hit me up. This stuff, dollars to donuts, is the best instant home stock solution available. It actually tastes like chicken. It's very simple. To make some
stock, you just use a teaspoon per cup of water. Bring that up to a boil. Now, for the vegetables, I have these frozen soup vegetable mix. It's definitely more than uh what's normally prescribed in chicken noodle soup, but again, we're talking zero prep. There's not too many options out there. There is frozen mirepoix available, but so hard to find, I couldn't couldn't find it. Now, for the chicken, we have a grocery store rotisserie chicken. This way we can get some dark meat in there. So, got our rotisserie chicken, which I'm going to shred. All right, now to the simmering stock, just enough frozen vegetables. Then we really just need to heat this meat through. So, uh let's just add it to the pot. And of
course, we need noodles. Going with the cheapest ones I could find, light and fluffy medium enriched egg noodles. Probably all comes together in about 10 minutes, which is pretty awesome. Like, it probably takes 5 minutes to heat up a can of Campbell's soup, but let's give it a try. That tastes like a perfectly serviceable homemade chicken noodle soup. It's about 10 billion times better than anything out of a can. The noodles are perfectly cooked, because we cooked them. The chicken is tender and moist, because it was just cooked as a rotisserie chicken and then heated up, so it didn't have the chance to dry out. The broth is nice and clean and chickeny tasting, and it's been lightly seasoned with the fresh vegetables simmering in
it. And sure, there's okra and corn in it, but you know, for 10 minutes and only store-prepped ingredients that you just need to like take apart and put in a pot, it's pretty incredible. It's a great way to go. Our first homemade one. Now, it's time to get even more homemade. At what point in the episode will virtually all of our audience lose interest in actually making the recipes and start watching purely for entertainment? Not this one. Not the next one. The one after that. The one the next one after the next one. After that. What level we on? So, we're going to start by having one large garlic clove, rough chopping one large Spanish onion. I like to get rid
of the skins. You can absolutely use them to make stock, but I think that they give it kind of a dirty off flavor. If you're going to use them, make sure you slice off the root section on the bottom. That's really going to give a funk. Just slicing this into wedges. Same deal with some celery. I'm saving all the good stocks for the actual soup. This is a great opportunity to use the inner stocks as well as the leaves, all the stuff that you might normally throw away. Carrots, likewise, I'm peeling them. I like to peel them, you don't have to. You could scrub them. I hate scrubbing vegetables. Likewise, just a rough chop there.
Now, I like to add parsnip to not only my chicken stock, but to my chicken noodle soup. It gives a great root vegetable flavor, but also a subtle sweetness that I don't think you get from any other vegetable. Then we're going to take a rotisserie chicken and shred that up. Then we're bringing them over to the stovetop. We're going to dump them all in the stockpot, along with our shredded rotisserie chicken. I'm also adding a handful of peppercorns, a little bit of fresh parsley, and of course, enough water to submerge everything in the pot. Then we're going to cover it, bring it to a simmer, and then we're going to skim off any scum or fat that floats to
the top of the stock. This isn't going to ruin the flavor or anything, but it can make the stock very cloudy. Once you get to a nice gentle simmer, we're going to partially cover and try to maintain a temperature of around 180 to 190° F. This is the ideal temperature for gelatin formation and collagen extraction. Then we're going to hold it there for 3 to up to 12 hours. Then strain through a fine mesh sieve, cool quickly, and immediately refrigerate or put it straight to good use in our soup. Pretty much the same vegetables getting prepped here. I'm doing just a normal dice of an onion, as well as the carrot and celery. We want them to all be the same kind of form factor. You don't want big hunks of carrot and little
bits of onion, or big hunks of celery and little bits of carrot. Now, we're placing those in a high-walled sauté pan and sautéing together for 3 to 5 minutes. We're just sweating them. This is going to help them break down in the soup and become tender. Also build some flavor early on in the process. Then we're going to add our chicken stock to the vegetables and bring the whole thing up to a simmer. As soon as you've got a very bare, very gentle simmer, just a few bubbles peeking out in the corners, that's when we're going to kill the heat and add our boneless, skinless chicken thighs. Then we're going to cover this up and let that residual carryover heat par cook the vegetables and almost fully cook the
chicken. You might be asking yourself, what the hell is that? Well, that's not chicken noodle soup. Well, stick with me. We are making a soup optimized for every single individual bowl. When you normally make chicken noodle soup, the bowls that you serve when you freshly made it are the best. vegetables are cooked perfectly, the noodles are al dente, and the chicken is juicy and moist. But then you let it cool, you put in the fridge, and you reheat it, the vegetables are soft, the chicken's overcooked, and you might as well fish out the noodles one by one and replace them cuz they're gross. We're going to bypass all that by refrigerating the soup at this stage. So, when we take it out of the fridge the next day, we have perfectly cooked
chicken and vegetables just cooked enough so that when we add the noodles, they'll finish cooking through. So, get that guy into a large saucepan, bring him up to a simmer, add some herbs. I'm going with fresh parsley and dill, then add your noodles. I'm going with some hearty egg noodles. Those are going to cook for about 10 minutes until they're done. And there you have it, chicken noodle soup where every bowl is as good as the last. It looks fantastic. It's laden with herbs. All the vegetables and the chicken are going to be cooked perfectly thanks to that sort of par cook and fridge overnight. Um and the veg, the carrots are completely soft, but they still taste like carrots.
They don't just taste like the rest of the soup. So, they have some of their own personality. The stock itself is laden with those really familiar herbs, the dill and the parsley. It's sweet. Uh carrots are naturally sweet, but parsnips add a distinct sweetness all their own. That's why I add them to all my chicken stocks, always. The noodles are cooked perfectly because we're not cooking them and then putting them in the fridge for leftovers. We're cooking the noodles fresh every serving. What you end up with is both the dictionary definition of chicken noodle soup, but also something that transcends how good you thought chicken noodle soup could be. It's functioning at the echelon of every level. Each bite is a
little different and yet utterly familiar. Sure, it's chicken noodle soup, but it makes you take a pause. What the hell is a matzo ball, and what is it doing in my soup? Spoken like a true Tennessean there, Brad. I'm from Arkansas. Even better. A matzo ball is a ball made from matzo. Very popular in the Jewish community, put in soup. And to make matzo balls, you could get matzo meal, but much more readily available is matzo ball soup mix, which is just matzo meal with some baking soda and some seasonings in it. So, it's not like you're going to do any better if you start from scratch. Follow the instructions on the package. I'm adding two eggs, and I'm going to add some garlic powder, onion powder, and
some freshly chopped herbs. This is going to give it a little bit more of a homemade note. This recipe also calls for a quarter cup of oil. Mix it all together and let it hydrate. It's going to be really gooey to start, and after about 20 minutes, it's going to firm up and be a texture that you can roll with wetted hands. It's going to stick to your hands unless you dip them in water. So, make sure that your hands are wet before you roll each ball. I'm rolling them out to the size of um like a ping pong ball cuz they're going to roughly double in size as they simmer for anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes depending on the package instructions.
Now, in the meantime, I'm taking some of the leftover fresh herbs and adding some salt and pepper to them just as a little garnish just to drop on top right at the end there. Our matzo balls are all puffed up and floating. They look delicious. We're going to dole them out and sprinkle some of our herb, salt, and pepper mixture on top. And there you have it, matzo ball soup, a simple but extremely effective upgrade. All right, let's try this out. Ooh, nice, dense. I don't know. There's something special about matzo balls. Are they better than noodles? Yeah, I think so. They make the soup eat more like a meal. It's almost like you have a main protein.
They have this wonderful bouncy, slightly chewy, but still tender and fluffy texture. And they're super easy to make. Uh and they just add they lend a whole new level of home madedness to your soup. Is this technically chicken noodle soup? No. But Um What the hell is an avgolemono, and what is it doing in my soup? Well, Brad, avgolemono is a Greek soup that's thickened with uh egg yolk and brightened with fresh lemon juice. And it is one of the very highest expressions of soup. Thank you so much for asking. You're welcome. Thank you. You're you're welcome again. To make avgolemono, we're basically going to make a chicken soup custard, which sounds gross, but it's
actually very, very good. I'm combining one whole egg plus two egg yolks in a medium heatproof bowl along with the juice of one to three lemons depending on how lemony you want things. Beat that together until it's smooth. I'm also going to grate in a clove of garlic cuz this is a very garlicky soup, and it's a fresh, bracing garlic flavor. Now, what makes this a custard is that we're basically going to treat it like a custard, slowly ladling in some of our hot soup into the egg mixture, whisking constantly, tempering the eggs so that when we add them back in, they don't scramble. Those eggs can hang out for a second while the soup heads back over to the
stovetop. We're going to bring it to a simmer and add orzo and herbs. Orzo is the pasta of choice for this soup. Don't ask me why. Once the orzo is fully cooked, be sure to season with salt and pepper, and then slowly stream in the egg and lemon mixture while whisking constantly. Make sure the heat is on low. You want mostly residual heat to cook this, but if it's a little too loose, if there's a lot of foam on top, hit it with some heat, keep it moving, make sure it's not scorching on the bottom. It should thicken up ever so slightly, maybe to the texture of half and half. And there you have it, one of the easiest and undoubtedly greatest upgrades to chicken noodle soup.
Avgolemono. Just use whichever one of those sounds correct. This is one of my very favorite expressions of chicken noodle soup. The addition of the eggs gives it this velvety, hearty character, and the lemon just sets things off. Like it's not in the front row, it's one of the background players, but it's bringing this beautiful balance to all that added richness. And orzo is the best way to get the maximum amount of pasta into your body. Almost not recognizable as chicken noodle soup, what you would traditionally call chicken noodle soup here in the Americas. But it is an incredible version of chicken noodle soup, an incredible way to quickly and easily upgrade your existing or your leftover chicken noodle soup.
What if I said your chicken noodle soup for the audience is soul? Well, to that I would say, well, shucks. That's so very nice. It's so That's a lovely thing to hear that I could be that sort of balm for y'all. And then I'd be like, why did I talk like that? And then I'd be like, well, I just I've get uncomfortable when people say nice things to me or characterize me in such a lovely manner. Uh so, I immediately turn stuff into a bit to deflect from the emotions that I'm feeling. Do you think that the level 10 chicken noodle soup could cure that sickness? Well, Brad, there's only one way to find out, and that's to make some level 10 chicken noodle soup, try it, and see if it fixes my many neuroses. So, for level 10, I'm going to take a
page out of Chris Young's book. He recently did an amazing episode on how to use a pressure cooker to make an incredible chicken stock. I'm going to follow his advice and very thinly slice all my vegetables on a mandoline for maximum flavor extraction. The one place I'm going to go a step further is with the chicken. I have here a Pennsylvania gold chicken that my friends over at Regalis Foods in Brooklyn hooked me up with. This is a heritage chicken in the style of those ultra-yellow French chickens that are just the best in the world. And it better be because this chicken was $44.
I'm going to start by snipping out its spine. I'm going to break down all the dark meat and the bones into small, manageable pieces, and I'm going to reserve the breast meat for the actual soup. Everything else is going in the pressure cooker. Even the skin, which I'm going to render out first to get all that awesome chicken skin to sauté my vegetables in. I think Chris would be proud. Once I've rendered out all the fat, I'm adding the vegetables, letting them sweat, letting them pick up a little bit of color, and I'm only doing half of them or so because we really only need the
Maillard. You don't need it on every surface. It can go on half. Add the chicken, add water, cover it up, and pressure cook it for 75 minutes, letting the steam release naturally over time. You don't want to turn the steam valve cuz that's going to mix everything up and cloud the broth. So, for the noodles, I'm going to make a version of an Italian soup noodle called passatelli. This is a kind of pasta that's made from breadcrumbs, Parmesan, and eggs that are pressed, and it's named passatelli, through a passatelli press or a potato ricer for quick, easy noodles that work really, really well in a broth. So, I got a nice loaf of Italian bread here that I'm going to cut up into 1-in pieces, spread out evenly on a rimmed
baking sheet, and dry in a low oven at 200° F for about 2 hours until they're completely dry. Once the bread is completely dried, we're going to put it in the jar of a food processor and whiz it down into homemade Italian breadcrumbs, which I'm going to pass through a fine mesh sieve. This is just to make sure that I get a fine enough texture on my noodles. Normally, this is a very rustic pasta, and this one's going to be a little bit more refined, if you will. 75 minutes later, and dear god, does this stuff smell like chicken. And you can see the unbelievable color not only of the broth, but of the fat on top. It's It's almost orange.
It's otherworldly. Now, I'm not just making broth here. For service, I'm going to try to clarify it into a consommé, again using a method from Chris Young. Normally, making a consommé is a very fussy, very French process where you have to liquefy chicken meats and egg whites, and you have to cook it all together, and it forms this very delicate raft that you have to very carefully scoop the broth out of without breaking it. It's time-consuming. It's difficult. It's pretty wasteful, too. Chris developed this incredible technique where he just freezes chicken stock into ice cubes and then lets those ice cubes melt in a coffee filter. And somehow, in doing so, it makes a perfectly clear, completely delicious consommé, and everything left in the coffee filter is
basically a chicken demi. Like it's this ultra concentrated, highly gelatinous chicken stuff. Hang on to that because it is gold. Now for the chicken in the actual chicken and noodle soup, I'm going to sous vide the chicken breasts. I want to do this because white meat chicken is usually the go-to in chicken noodle soup. I prefer dark meat, but I wanted to see if I could make a white meat chicken noodle soup that isn't dry and papery. So, I'm vacuum sealing together these chicken breasts and I'm sous viding it at 140° F for anywhere from 1 to 1 and 1/2 hours. Now to make the actual noodle though, I'm going to combine equal parts breadcrumbs and semolina flour, followed with a pinch of
salt, and about 100 g of freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano. So, it's a ratio of 2 to 1. Mix all that together and then we're going to sort of make this grandma style. I'm going to make a well in the center of the dry ingredients, beat them together, slowly incorporate the dry stuff, and what I'm looking for here is a dry, sandy dough. We want it dry because it's going to go through a pasta extruder. So, it's got to be a little drier than you think it should be. And this is actually pretty sticky, so I'm going to keep adding flour until I get to a short, almost crumbly consistency. Now this stuff is getting extruded onto a bed of semolina flour. At first I couldn't really figure out
what shape I wanted to go for. Was it short little rounds or was it longer kind of noodles? And eventually I made a bunch of different sizes, but this stuff came out really interesting. It's tender but toothsome and it has an amazing flavor to it. Now I'm going for a suitably fru-fru presentation, so I'm going to very carefully dice my vegetables so they're all exactly the same size, well roughly. I've got carrot, celery, parsnip, and turnip that I'm cutting into probably 1/4 in cubes. These guys are getting blanched for anywhere from 1 to 3 minutes until they just start to get soft and then they're getting shocked in an ice bath.
This is going to give us vegetables that are fully cooked but taste only like themselves. So, every bite is going to be bursting with fresh vegetable flavor. Now for a decisive finishing move, I'm making an infused chicken schmaltz. Putting about a cup of the schmaltz in a fry pan and then I'm borrowing flavors from pho. I'm adding some Vietnamese cinnamon, one star anise pod, some saffron just to be fancy, a couple whole cloves, maybe just one whole clove, a few green cardamom pods, and some whole coriander seed. Bring this up to a bare simmer and we're just going to let it cook and infuse with those
flavors no more than 5 minutes over very, very low heat. This stuff tastes unreal, like otherworldly good, but also add a little bit of sesame oil to give it some richness and some diversity in its flavor. After a couple hours, I have a perfectly clear, beautiful chicken consommé and some goo. And what I'm doing here is I'm just putting it in a nonstick pan, not to cook it, but to chill it. I'm spreading it out into an even layer and this guy's headed into the fridge so I can cut out little shapes of chicken demi. Triangles and squares. Isn't that fun? Now the broth tastes beautifully of chicken, but just chicken and the aromatics that went into it. So, I'm going to infuse it many fancy Michelin star restaurants do and pour it
tableside, if you will. I'm adding three roughly chopped chives, a big old lemon peel, couple hunks of fresh lemongrass, little bit of fresh parsley, some fresh chervil, and some fresh ginger. I'm also going to add a couple white peppercorns. This is apparently an essential to add to our chicken consommé and bring it up to a boil, then just let it steep. Meanwhile, our chicken breast is ready to come out of the bath. It's a little bit undercooked. 140 is a very challenging texture, but the hot soup being added will bring it the rest of the way. Now it's time to assemble. I'm starting with these little
gelatinous cutouts of our chicken demi, around which I'm going to arrange our vegetables and some chicken cubes as well, cut to the same size. Each of those chicken cubes is getting a little bit of fresh dill on top. Now everything's pretty much ready to come together here, so I'm going to cook our pasta for about 45 seconds. That's all it takes. Drain it, toss it with a little bit of butter, then I'm going to start arranging those around the plate as well, using tweezers, of course. And normally you'd do this in a French press, but I don't have one, so I'm just straining out the chicken consommé and
very carefully pouring it over top, trying not to disturb all of its delicate counterparts. Then I'm drizzling that infused chicken schmaltz right over top. Little bit of flaky finishing salt and I've got some freshly ground pepper I'm going to very carefully sprinkle over top. And there you have it, folks. What I very well imagine level 10 chicken noodle soup is like. Let's see if it's [snorts] tastes better than it looks. That is intense, man. That [snorts] is crazy. Oh, that oil is really unique. It brings all these nice warming spices that you're kind of used to with pho. Um but it's it's in a chicken noodle soup context. And pho is a kind of chicken noodle soup, if you ask me. Each vegetable
tastes like itself. The carrots taste like carrots, turnips taste like turnips, celery like celery. They all have a nice firmness to them, but they're very, very soft. Parsnips, of course, bring in a lovely sweetness. Some fresh dill on top to light things off and the chicken is so very tender. And this broth, shut up. It's delicious. Is it worth the 2 days of work? No. You can say that about most fine dining. That's why you go out to restaurants and let those guys do it. But some of the flavors here I'm definitely hanging on to. Infused schmaltz and that pastina, I'm going to try to find every single way I can to incorporate Parmesan and nutmeg into pasta.
Gosh darn it, that's good. If I were sick, I'd be healthy now. But I'm healthy, so now I'm a super basically a better person. That's chicken noodle soup for the soul. Forget the Bible. This is found it. So, what do we learn here today apart from some fun tips and tricks to incorporate in your chicken noodle soup or some fun new recipes to try, right? I guess that's it. Other than the fact that chicken noodle soup is indeed a salve, is indeed something that raises your spirits, makes you feel a little bit better when you're feeling down. It did for me just last week. I'm Don't know if you can hear it,
but I'm still gunked up. I'm still not doing well and I made some chicken noodle soup and here I am. I should be dead. But here I am talking to you about it. So, do your own research. Trust no one. And make some chicken noodle soup and do it with Babish. Thanks again to Cook Unity for sponsoring this episode. They have hundreds of dishes to choose from with options for every dietary preference like vegan, keto, or low sodium. Lately I've been repeatedly ordering the Singaporean chicken curry rice bowl by Chef Amy Preik and Mom's Sunday Sauce Rigatoni by Chef John DeLucie.
They also have a new fitness fuel menu where you can choose from a number of meals for functional nutrition. The variety and convenience of Cook Unity can't be beat and meals are all delivered in compostable, recyclable, or reusable packaging. Go to the link in the description to try Cook Unity and get 50% off your first order of chef-made meals delivered fresh to your door. Use code Babish and try it out.
