With all this left over Thanksgiving turkey and chilly weather, I had to make soup!

I searched for easy chicken noodle soup recipes and found this one from Rachel Ray’s 30 minute meals. Then I found another from Betty Crocker and put the two together, modified it a little and created this deliciousness! Seriously, I could eat soup every day!

This took me a little over 30 minutes to prepare but considering that it was totally a last minute idea, I’m pretty proud of myself. I even had most of the ingredients at home!

You will need:

• 1 lb of cooked chicken (or in my case turkey) cubed
• 1 cup of chopped carrots
• 1 cup of sliced baby bella mushrooms (a wonderful addition!)
• 5 cups of chicken stock
• 1/2 yellow onion diced
• 2 garlic cloves minced
• 2 ribs celery chopped
• small handful of parsley flakes
• salt and pepper
• egg noodles (rice noodles for me!)

The most time consuming part of this recipe is the prep-work. You’ll need to cut the chicken into cubes, dice the onion, chop the carrots as small as you want them, slice up the celery and mince the garlic. All of this can take some time depending on how skilled you are with a knife!

I began by sautéing the onion in a little olive oil on low/medium heat. After about 5 minutes I added the carrots and let them simmer for a bit. Then I added the mushrooms and celery for another 7 minutes or so. I kept checking to see how soft the carrots and celery were getting. I don’t like crunchy veggies in my soup.

While this was working, I poured the 5 cups of chicken stock into a large pot and warmed it up on medium. Then I added the turkey and brought it to a boil. I let it cook for a few minutes and then added all of the ingredients from the sauté pan.

I stirred everything together and brought it back to a boil and added the noodles. I used these rice noodles because I’m not eating gluten…

I cooked everything together for 6 minutes and tested to noodles to make sure they were done.

I stirred in the parsley flakes and removed the pot from the burner.

Voila! It turned out fabulous and I proceeded to stuff my belly with hot, nutritious, yummy soup!

This is an inexpensive, healthy meal that should feed 4 or 3 very hungry people! In my case, I’ll have soup for lunch tomorrow!