celery

Homemade chicken noodle soup
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Easy Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

This easy recipe for homemade chicken noodle soup can easily be prepared almost as quickly as the packaged stuff, and is actually made with real chicken.

Homemade chicken noodle soup

Ingredients for an Easy Chicken Noodle Soup

You will need:

  • Chicken broth (homemade or from a can)
  • Chicken breasts
  • Butter
  • Onion
  • Celery
  • Egg noodles
  • Sliced carrots
  • Basil, oregano, salt and pepper

How to Make Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

Before you do anything, you need to fry up roughly half a pound of chicken breast. Your chicken should be thoroughly cooked before using it for this soup recipe.

Chop up your celery and onion. You will need about a half cup of each. Add more or use less depending on your opinion of sort-of-crunchy things.

Bring a large pot to medium heat and add a tablespoon or two of butter. Cook your celery and onion in the butter for between 5 and 10 minutes, or until they begin to soften.

Once the celery and onion begin to soften you can pour in your chicken broth. You should add about six to eight cups of broth. More broth would just give you more soup but unless you balance out the broth with more soup-stuff then it probably isn’t worth it.

Now you can add your (already cooked and cut) chicken, about a cup and a half of egg noodles, some chopped carrots, and your spices. You should use a teaspoon or less of both oregano and basil, and as with anything else, you can add salt and pepper to taste.

Once you have everything combined in the pot, bring the soup to a boil. Once it reaches a boil, reduce the heat and let your chicken noodle soup simmer for about twenty minutes.

Tips for Making Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

  • Basil, oregano, salt and pepper are just recommendations. This is an area where you can easily experiment or just use something you like better.
  • Homemade chicken broth is an obviously better choice than the canned stuff but for the purposes of this simple recipe, the canned stuff is probably more reasonable.
  • As with most soups and stews, letting this chicken noodle soup simmer longer will result in an overall better soup. Beyond twenty minutes you will see diminishing returns, though.
Easy Homemade Chili, covered in cheese
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Easy Ground Beef Chili Recipe

This is a very easy chili recipe that you can cook on the stovetop with any decent sized pan. Preparation is quick and painless, but if you want this chili to turn out great, you should give yourself time to cook it for a while.

Easy Homemade Chili, covered in cheese

More cheese than chili

Ingredients for Easy Ground Beef Chili

  • One pound of (preferably lean) ground beef
  • Three to four large tomatoes
  • A large onion
  • Celery stalks
  • Anywhere from one to three cups of kidney beans
  • Chili powder
  • Oregano
  • Thyme
  • Cayenne pepper
  • Two to four fresh jalapeno peppers
  • Two or three garlic cloves
  • One can of beef soup stock

How to Prepare an Easy Ground Beef Chili

In your frying pan, heat a tablespoon of oil on medium to high heat.  Once your pan and oil preheat, add your ground beef.

While you’re waiting for the oil to heat and the beef to brown, start chopping up all your vegetables and your garlic.

Once the beef has browned, throw in your chopped celery, a fairly finely chopped onion, and two or three crushed garlic cloves.  Cook until the onion begins to soften.

Now add everything else.  For your spices, a good guideline is one tablespoon of chili powder, oregano, thyme, and cayenne pepper.  But like I said, there really isn’t a “wrong way” to flavor a chili.

Cover and cook for a minimum of one hour over low heat. There is pretty much no way to cook a chili for too long, as long as you’re simmering at a nice low temperature.

When it comes down to it though, you should just buy a slow cooker and cook a larger quantity for much longer.  Most of the time a recipe of this size is meant to be for between four and six people.  I’d recommend keeping it to yourself, or maybe sharing with one person maximum.

Tips for Making Chili

  • If you don’t like kidney beans you can substitute them out for more ground beef.
  • Seriously, cook this thing at low heat for a really long time. It’ll just turn out better if you’re patient.
  • If you premake a batch of chili powder it can simplify the chili-making process as well as be used in other recipes.
  • Every time you make a bowl of chili, cover the whole thing with cheese. As pictured above.