I made some delicious chicken noodle soup the other day.

Time it took: 4 hours — but a very easy 4 hours

• I made my own vegetable stock from scratch before making the soup
• I just let the stuff boil & simmer on the stove while I blogged
• I have enough portions for at least 6-8 meals

Ingredients

Sorry. I don’t measure anything. I just eyeball how much I think I need.

Adjust as needed.

If you hate leeks, but love celery, put it in.

I personally hate celery, so that never appears in any of my creations.

Vegetable Stock

• Leeks —– I used 2
• Onions —— I used 2
• Tomatoes —– I used 1
• Garlic —— I used 5 cloves, sliced
• Ginger Slices — I used a good handful, sliced
• Italian Parsley —- I used a bunch, plucking off the leaves only
• Cooking Salt —- I used a small pinch

Spicy Chicken Soup

• Soup Stock (You can just buy it, but I like homemade)
• Soy Sauce — A good splash
• Bay Leaves — I used 3
• Chicken — I used 4 pieces
• Carrots — I used a package of carrots (I LOVE them in soup)
• Shallots — I used 4 shallots, sliced
• Onions — I used 2 onions, sliced
• Spicy Pancetta (Italian Bacon) — I used a whole package, about 250 grams

(The spice came from the pancetta and wasn’t over powering or too spicy. No pepper needed.)

Fresh Garnish

• Italian Parsley — I just plucked off the leaves
• Green Onions (Scallions) — Chopped

Pasta/Noodles

• Olive Oil — Just a splash
• Cooking Salt — A small pinch
• Good quality pasta — (I buy mine from the Italian area in Montreal, and it’s killer.)

FYI: Cooking Salt a.k.a. Salt Rocks a.k.a. Rock Salt

Cooking Salt, or what I call salt rocks are these:

I use them in cooking pasta or to flavour soups with a bit of salt, because it’s a quick way to get a good chunk of salt in there, without making a mess with the tiny grains of table salt.

Just a pinch will do.

1. Making Vegetable Stock

I chopped up all of my vegetables, threw them into a pot with water and a couple of salt rocks.

I let it simmer and boil on low for about an hour and a half.

Just check on it once in a while, stirring a bit to release the flavours.

There’s no need to baby it, it’s soaking in water.

It won’t burn unless you leave it to reduce too long.

It smells incredible, but it tastes kind of bland, because it’s just flavoured water with a bit of salt.

DO NOT ADD MORE SALT.

It’s meant to just have the great, subtle flavours of every vegetable in the water, so that when you cook the chicken in it later, it will be infused with that.

You can add salt later.

2. Start the soup

After your vegetable stock has reduced to your desired amount (this is usually when your veggies look wilted, brown and overcooked/done), you’re ready to start the soup.

Drain out the semi-clear stock from the veggies and put it back into the pot, without the vegetables.

Add the soy sauce, chicken, bay leaves, chopped carrots, and sliced up pancetta bacon in the stock.

Carrots are harder, and take longer to cook, so they should go in at the start.

(Try and cut them in uniform sizes, so they cook evenly.)

I put it on the stove for about an hour and half on medium-low, and it perfumed the entire home.

Near the end, I added the onions & shallots for the last 10 minutes so that they retain a good crunch to them, rather than being mushy.

3. Remove the chicken & peel it off the bone

This is an optional step.

I really hate removing bones or peeling shells from things while I am eating, so I like to de-bone and prepare everything so it’s easily eaten without getting your fingers dirty.

Childhood habit.

So I removed the chicken, let it cool and started peeling the meat off in chunks (it slides right off).

This was what is left in the pot. Still not bad for a soup, because it has pancetta bacon in it for some protein.

4.Cook Pasta

I only have one pot.

So I put the pot back on the boil, and tossed in some pasta with a dash of olive oil, some more cooking salt.

This is the only time you’re ever going to get to flavour the pasta, which is why I add salt, olive oil and sometimes an herb as well.

I find the perfect time for cooking my pasta is 17 minutes and 30 seconds.

Not too mushy, not too al dente.

After it comes to a hard boil, to pour in the pasta, and stir it immediately.

Stir the pasta every couple of minutes, so that it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pot, or to each other.

The olive oil will also help with the pasta to not stick to each other.

5. Finished Product: Spicy Chicken Noodle Soup

Put it all together.

Heat up the soup if it got a bit cold while waiting for the pasta (what?! I only have one pot!!) and then add a handful of cooked pasta.

I garnished with Italian parsley and green onions.

This recipe is definitely a keeper.

It was AWESOME.

The vegetable stock was deliciously infused into the chicken, it had all my favourite veggies (onions and carrots) in the final product, and the garnishes added a nice, fresh, green bite and flavour to the soup.

I could even eat the whole thing without the chicken if I wanted, and save the chicken for another dish with rice.

The spicy pancetta is perfect in the soup, or I could just eat it plain without any meat, because the soup is so flavourful.

Bonus: I got 6-8 servings of leftovers!!

BF hates soup, but wanted to eat all my pancetta bacon, chicken, veggies & pasta without the soup.

So I end up eating all of it by myself.

Soup tastes better the next day, anyway.

I portioned out everything so that nothing would get soggy.

Pasta on its own, nice and semi-dry. Chicken on its own, bacon left in the soup with the carrots & onions.

Garnishes, of COURSE, on their own as well (not pictured).

When it comes time to make the soup or to eat it, just put it all together.

Don’t forget to scrape off the layer of fat from the soup when it congeals, so you lower the calorie count.

Then scoop some soup gel into the bowl along with some pasta, put it into the microwave with one or two minutes to heat it up.

Add the chicken last, in the second heating in the microwave for a minute, or else you are going to end up overcooking the chicken.

Debt Hater was debating between eating at home all the time or eating out. She wanted to know how to figure out a way to see if eating at home was cheaper or not.

For me, it is cheaper to eat at home.

Without a doubt, I spend $200-$250 a month on really good, organic foods, and if I were to eat out all the time, I would have a bigger waist and a smaller wallet, to the tune of $450 a month.

I arrived at $450 as a number because I actually ate out for one day, and had a bowl of Pho for lunch without a breakfast.

I was so full, I didn’t need to eat anything for the rest of the day. So… $15 x 30 days = $450 on average.

No going outside of the $15 tax & tip included zone, which means my  food choices would be kind of limited based on price.

For me, eating out is definitely easier.

I could probably make the Pho at home for cheaper if I took the time to do it, but t it takes such a dang long time if you want to get the soup really flavourful and done right.

 

But if you are trying to find a differential between whether eating out all the time at cheapie places or eating at home is cheaper, try these two methods.

You will NEED to be tracking all your expenses for these methods to work.

 

Method #1: Track it by the total amount

1. Try each method for one week.
2. Try eating at home and buying groceries for the whole week.
3. The next week, try only eating out for the whole week.
4. Compare the two totaled amounts.

Notes:

You will probably have leftovers from groceries or eating out, but pretend they don’t exist, as we are looking at the totals, rather than on a per-meal basis.

As not to waste food, I would suggest buying what you think you need for the week, and then eating the food until it’s completely gone, even if it goes over a week (7 days).

If it goes over an entire week, and ends up being 9 days for example, then take the grocery bill, divide it by the 9 days, and multiply it by 7 days to get an approximation for a week.

On the 10th day, start eating out for 7 whole days for whenever you feel hungry.

Eat any leftovers before you buy a new meal.

Method #2: Count by the meals

 

1. Try each method for the week, the same as in Method #1
2. But this time, keep track somewhere of how many meals you ate out of the money you spent
3. The difference is you are looking at the amounts by the number of meals eaten rather than a single, total weekly amount

 

Notes:

If you eat at home, and you have leftovers into the next week, that grocery bill counted for those meals.

So if you bought $50 of groceries but you went over 7 days into 9 days, count the meals you ate for those extra days as part of the grocery total, just like above. 

Only this time, you would have something like: $50 in groceries = 27 meals (9 days, 3 times a day)

If you eat out, and you have leftovers for another meal, that one receipt counts for two meals.

 

At the end, you should have a good idea of what you would typically spend eating out or cooking at home for each month.

The problem with NOT tracking it methodically as described above, is that if you eat out today, but cook at home tomorrow, you start mixing the receipts & getting the food amounts confused.

Plus, if you plan on always eating out, would you ever cook at home? And vice versa?

You have to try that kind of lifestyle for a week to see if you could get used to it, or get sick of it.

When I traveled and ate out all the time, I eventually hated it so much, that I finally bought some plain bread and cheese.

A simple, no fuss, no muss meal.

It was all I wanted.

It was what I craved, after eating steaks, and other restaurant-type fare.

Any other tips from readers on how to calculate or figure out which way is cheaper?