Chicken noodle soup
Chicken noodle soup is a lunch staple we keep on Scoops & Dishes because it rewards a clear metric method: grams and millilitres, Australian cups (250 ml), and steps you can follow without scrolling past a novel. Plan on 45 min from starting prep to plating for 4. Prep is about 15 min; the active cook or oven time is closer to 30 min. Read the whole method once before you turn on the heat. The character of the dish comes from olive oil, onion and carrots. Check quantities in grams where listed — volume is fine for many liquids, but baking and batter ratios behave better on scales. After cooking, pack it for later or eat it fresh at the table. Halve it for one, or double when the kids bring friends home. If humidity or a fan oven changes browning, trust visual cues over the last minute of the clock. Everything on this page is metric-first for Australia. If you are converting from cups on an old card, weigh flour, sugar, and butter whenever the ingredient line shows grams.
Ingredients
Method
- Heat oil in a pot. Soften onion, carrot and celery 8 minutes. Add garlic 1 minute.
- Pour in stock; add chicken and bay leaf. Simmer gently 15–18 minutes until chicken is cooked.
- Lift out chicken; shred. Add noodles to the pot; cook until tender. Return chicken. Season.
- Ladle into bowls; finish with parsley.
Tip: Gentle simmer keeps chicken tender. Add noodles only when serving if you plan leftovers (they swell).
Notes
- Method rhythm: step one is “Heat oil in a pot. Soften onion, carrot and celery 8 minutes. Add garlic 1 minute.”. Do not skip resting, cooling, or draining steps if they appear later — they are usually there for texture. The finish is “Ladle into bowls; finish with parsley.”. Taste before you plate; salt at the end often needs a final pinch.
- From our tested tip, expanded: Gentle simmer keeps chicken tender. Add noodles only when serving if you plan leftovers (they swell). Treat that as the non-negotiable. If something still feels off — too wet, too pale, too tight — adjust one variable at a time (heat, liquid, or bake time) rather than changing three things at once.
- Before the heat goes on, line up olive oil, onion and carrots and anything perishable from the list. Soften butter, bring eggs off the fridge if the method needs them room-temp, and preheat so you are not waiting mid-recipe. For a lunch cook of this size (4), a clear bench saves more time than any gadget.
- Putting it together for Chicken noodle soup: work clean, taste as you go, and do not rush browning or reduction steps if they appear in the method. If you are cooking for mixed diets, plate sauces and toppings separately where practical. Keep this page bookmarked if it becomes a household regular — we update wording when cooks report a confusing step. Metric consistency across Scoops & Dishes means once you trust the cups and scales here, breakfast through dessert behaves the same way.