The ultimate comfort food, chicken noodle soup is the go to meal whenever you feel ill, it’s cold or you are just feeling low. Wonder how to spice it up?
Great as it sounds, you may have found it a bit challenging to cook that soup with a certain flavor, to no avail. It is just never as good as the one you had from the restaurant. Your chicken noodle soup almost always turns out as bland or watery.
You won’t have to worry about that anymore. With these simple methods you will shake up how you prepare your chicken noodle soup and have it taste yummy and spicy. Just the way you like it.
Ways to Spice up Your Chicken Noodle Soup
1. Add Some Different Flavor
At times, all you need to spice up your chicken noodle soup is shaking up things a bit. You know, try some new additions to your soup. This will definitely work wonders with your soup.
You can try by adding coconut milk, or even lime to get that tangy taste.
Whatever it is you choose to add to your chicken noodle soup, it is sure to switch things up.
2. Sprinkle Cheese to Your Chicken Noodle Soup
To change your favorite soup from bland and boring, you can try adding spicy cheese to your chicken soup.
With this variation, you can choose to just sprinkle the cheese, this will create a creamy textured soup or you can add the cheese to the chicken soup while you stir it in.
3. Use Spices and Herbs
This method works best when cooking the chicken noodle soup from scratch. For chicken soup that has mostly cooked through, it may be difficult to add flavor.
With that in mind, for this process you will need fresh herbs and if they are not available, you can also use dried powdered herbs.
You can use herbs such as parsley, thyme or rosemary.
Add the herbs to the soup and let it simmer for 15 to 30 minutes. For best results, consider chopping the vegetables before adding them to the soup. This will ensure the soup gets much of the flavor from the herbs.
In case you only have dried herbs, as the chicken noodle soup is simmering, add the powdered spices in small bits at a time. This will help avoid seasoning the soup too much
4. Consider Using Broth for Your Soup
While this may sound obvious, a lot of people overlook it.
Naturally, you will want to base your chicken noodle soup on chicken broth. Doing so, not only increases the soup’s density but also enhances the chicken noodle’s flavor.
You may want to use pre-made broth for your chicken noodle soup. However, this is not advisable.
Pre-made broth almost always contains high levels of sodium which Is not good for your health.
Should you be pressed to use pre-made broth however, always go with the broth that is indicated as low on sodium or sodium free.
The best alternative is using the broth you make by yourself at home as you cook your chicken. Preserve some of the broth from cooking chicken, then base your chicken noodle soup on the broth you preserved.
5. Using Vegetables in Your Soup
Thanks to broccoli and probably Brussels sprout, vegetables have a bad rap with most people.
You’ll be forgiven if you were to disagree that vegetables can make any meal exciting.
As It turns out, vegetables not only add nutrients when added to soup, but they also add flavor to the soup while giving texture and bulk.
As an added benefit, vegetables naturally have low levels of sodium, hence you can add a wide variety of vegetables to your chicken noodle soup meaning more flavor options for you.
For starters, you can try adding vegetables such as eggplant to your chicken noodle soup, or if you are into tangy flavors, add some lemon juice.
For healthy chicken noodle soup, adding vegetables to chicken noodle soup makes for the ultimate winner.
6. Adding Mushrooms Sautéed with Ginger
This hearty addition is sure to take your seemingly bland chicken noodle soup to tasty chicken noodle soup.
Use olive oil to sauté mushrooms and ginger.
You can then add in a dash of spices of your liking. You can use black pepper, garlic or Italian herbs.
Ensure you mix the spices with the sautéed mushrooms with ginger well, before adding them to your chicken noodle soup.
Now that you’ve known how you can spice up your chicken noodle soup, it’s time to advance even further.
Let’s learn how to make spicy Asian chicken noodle soup.
More recipe on baking chicken! Read it here.
How to Make Spicy Asian Chicken Noodle Soup?
Now this is for the big boys and girls only.
This variation in preparing chicken noodle soup has quite the spice in it. It is not to be trifled with if you are not very much used to spices.
Procedure
- Place a large pan on a stove turn at medium heat.
- Sautee onion and carrot for about 4 minutes until they soften.
- Add mushrooms and let them cook for some additional 2 to 3 minutes until they also soften and shrink.
- Put your chilies, garlic and ginger and stir them for at least 1 minute.
- Add water and broth, turning the heat down to simmer.
- Add the pieces of chicken breast to the broth, and let it simmer for about 20 minutes or until when the chicken pieces are well cooked. You can check this by confirming the internal temperature reading for the thickest part of the meat is 165 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Remove the chicken pieces from the broth, and once the pieces have cooled, shred them using a fork.
- Add the noodles to the broth mixture. Cook for an additional 8 minutes.
- Add the shredded chicken to the simmering broth and let it cook for 2 more minutes.
- Add in soy sauce and stir.
Conclusion
That sums it up for how to spice up chicken noodle soup. You can always try shaking up how you mix the ingredients.
Just as versatile as chicken is, you can always switch up how you spice up your chicken noodle soup.
Wondered how long can you freeze a chicken? Read my post about it.
