Hearty Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

Contributed By: Adventures in Freeze Drying: For Beginners

This recipe makes enough to fill 12 medium trays*

Directions:

1. In a large stock pot on your stove add the veggies, Chicken backs and carcasses, and all of the spices and seasonings, add 24 C of Water.
2. Bring everything to a boil on the stove top, turn the temperature to low and boil for 4-6 hours. 
3. Add 4lbs of chicken breasts and continue to cook on low heat for 1 hour. 
4. Pull all chicken and bones out of the broth, put broth and veggies in the fridge to cool overnight. Put Chicken in the fridge overnight.
5. Chop chicken breasts into small pieces, for rehydration purposes smaller is better. You can pull some of the meat off of the chicken bones if you wish. 
6. Remove as much fat as possible from the top of the Chicken broth and vegetables. 
7. Add everything back into your stock pot and return to a boil. 
8. Add noodles and cook until noodles are 98% done. Stopping early will help them to not fall apart when they reconstitute. 
9. I chose to pour 2 Cups of soup into Quart sized baggies and freeze them laying flat.
10. Remove from baggies and place on a lined tray, I placed 2 baggies per tray because of weight limits of the Freeze Dryer. 
11. Store Appropriately (See Tips and Tricks for storage help)

You can break up the 2 Cup portions and store in a quart sized jar for easy meal for 2, or freeze in 1 C portions and put in a pint jar for easy single serve portions.

Cycle Time:

My Cycle time was about 46 and ½ hours in a medium freeze dryer. However I added 15 hours of extra cycle time so I wouldn’t have to get up in the middle of the night.

Rehydration:

Add boiling hot water, stir, let sit for 5 minutes, check and repeat until you reach desired consistency. I used 2 C of water for each 2 C pre portioned section of soup.

* Large Tray = 8 Cups/tray   Medium = 6 Cups/Tray   Small = 4 Cups/Tray

Cycle times & rehydration for reference only. Your results may vary.