Recipe - Chicken Noodle Soup New Orleans Style

1 lg Whole fryer
1 cup Onions; minced
One half cup Celery; minced
One half cup Parsley; minced
4 Garlic clove; garlic
1 cup Carrots; chopped
3 Bay leaves
1 teaspoon Poultry seasoning
4 qt ;Water
12 ounce Broad egg noodles
2 tablespoon Butter
1 cup Onion rings; cut or sliced up
1 cup Mushrooms; cut or sliced up
1 cup Carrots; minced
One fourth cup Cream sherry
Salt & pepper; to taste
Scallions; for garnish

First, take the chicken and wash it thoroughly that means both inside and
out! Remove the giblets, scrub out the internal cavity under cold running
water, and scrape away anything that doesn't look edible. (But DO NOT
remove the chicken skin or any of the fat! You need the skin to make a
rich stock.)

Next, take a crock pot (see Note below if you don't have a crock pot)
and place the chicken and giblets into it. Then drop in the minced onions,
the One half cup of celery, the One half cup of minced parsley, the garlic, chopped
carrots and bay leaves, poultry seasoning and *2* quarts of water. Then,
with a spoon, evenly distribute the seasoning mixture around the chicken,
turn the crock pot to high, and cook for at least six hours (or better
still, OVERNIGHT). Remember, the longer you cook, the richer the base stock
and the more tender the chicken.

While the chicken is slowcooking, it's a good time to prepare your
noodles. Go ahead and boil them according to package directions... but DO
NOT COOK THEM UNTIL DONE! Keep in mind that you're going to drop them into
a soup, so you want them el dente (firm), otherwise they'll turn to pure
mush by the time you eat them. Furthermore, you want a small percent of the
starch in the noodles to cook into the soup to thicken it slightly if you
cook the noodles all the way, the soup's consistency will be flat and thin.

After the noodles are cooked, butter them slightly and set them aside.

When the chicken is tender, take a set of tongs or a strainer spoon,
remove it from the crock pot (it may tend to fall apart, but that's okay),
and set it on a platter to cool. At this point, strain out all the
seasoning vegetables from the stock, place the stock into a metal bowl, and
place the bowl into the refrigerator or freezer until the chicken fat
congeals (which should take about 1 hour). Meanwhile, pick the chicken off
the bones and, with a sharp knife, chop it into bitsized pieces.

Then, in a heavy 12inch skillet, melt the butter and saute the cut or sliced up
onions, mushrooms, and carrots until they're tender. Then drop in the
chopped chicken meat. And over mediumlow heat, cook it into the vegetables
for about 10 minutes.

While the chicken and vegetables are sauteing, remove the chicken
stock from the refrigerator, skim off all the fat, and place the skimmed
stock into a soup pot, along with the remaining 2 quarts of water. At this
point, you should season the soup stock to taste with salt and pepper.

Now drop in the sauteed chicken, mushrooms, onion rings and minced
carrots along with the sherry, the Tabasco*, and as soon as it comes to a
boil, reduce the heat to low and simmer the soup for about 30 minutes to
allow all the flavors to thoroughly blend.

When you're ready to eat, ladle out heaping helpings of the piping hot
soup into bowls, garnish with a sprinkling of thinly cut or sliced up green onions,
and serve with crunch saltines.

*I just put a couple of drops of Tabasco in there Michelle, how much are
we supposed to put in there?

From : MARGE CLARK
SOURCE Cathy Keller

Posted By waring@ima.infomail.com (Sam Waring) On rec.food.recipes or
rec.food.cooking

From Gemini's MASSIVE MealMaster collection at www.synapse.com/~gemini