Slow Cooker Homestyle Chicken Noodle Soup

Cool, crisp, fall days are soup time to me!  And inspired after a weekend visit back home to my parents' farm, I decided to make some Homestyle Chicken Noodle Soup in my slow-cooker.

Love the beautiful colors on my way "up north"

Start with all of your ingredients (I like to prep as much as I can the night before, so I can throw everything in the slow cooker before I go to work in the morning).  Since I don't like the fuss around with bones, I use boneless skinless chicken breasts.  Another one of my favorite things to use is homemade chicken broth.  That's whats in the jars on the right.  I make a big batch of it and freeze for whenever I need some.  (By the way, these are my last two jars so I'm going to have to make a batch of that soon too!).  

I put the chicken on the bottom and LIBERALLY sprinkle with salt & pepper.  Since I'm using a homemade stock with no added salt, I use quite a bit of salt & pepper at this step.  If you are using the canned broth, I'd back off on the salt since those tend to have it already added.  Then I sprinkle with Thyme, Parsley, and Turmeric (a trick I learned from Pioneer Woman to give the soup that nice golden color).  Add your broth, cover, and cook on low for 8 hours.  

When I get home, I put on a pot of water & boil the egg noodles on the stove.  While those are cooking, pull the chicken breasts out, shred with two forks, and drop back into the broth.  Add the cooked noodles and serve.   

Slow Cooker Homestyle Chicken Noodle Soup

1 pound of boneless, skinless chicken breasts

2-3 whole carrots

2 stalks of celery 

1/2 medium onion

4 cups of chicken broth

2 tsp of Parsley Flakes

1/2 tsp of Turmeric

1/2 tsp of Thyme

salt

pepper

1 pkg of Egg Noodles

Slow Cooker Beef Noodle Soup

Ok, first things first. I am not really the cooking type, in fact my husband is the one who usually cooks. I would much rather bake. I think the issue is not that I'm an awful cook, I just get too overwhelmed when trying to make more then one thing at one time. That's why I like to bake - follow the recipe, add the items one by one, put in oven, take out when the timer beeps and ta-da! A delicious treat!

With that said, the last time we were at my in-laws I saw they had this Slow Cooker Revolution cookbook. I browsed through it & each recipe I looked at sounded really good & looked like something I could do. And being the lucky girl I am, a few days later my very own copy showed up at our house-thanks David! I've made a couple things out of it so far & this time thought I'd give the Old Fashioned Beef Noodle Soup a try.

 There were a few things that I thought were interesting about the recipe. The first thing is, it has you microwave the onion along with the spices and some tomato paste before adding it with the veggies and meat to the slow-cooker. 

The other thing I was surprised by, is the recipe did not have you add the noodles directly to the slow cooker. After 8 hours of cooking, I boiled the noodles on the stove & then mixed them in with the rest of the soup right before serving. 

According to the husband, it was the best soup I've ever made. He went back for seconds, and the next day ate all that was leftover before I even got home from work! Good thing I froze 1/2 of it right away, and I'm guessing it won't stay in the freezer too long!