January always seems to be that time when you seem to either have a cold, want to start eating healthily after a little festive indulgence, or perhaps just need to get away from more traditional foods like turkey that dominate in December! If this sounds like you, why not try something a little different this week for dinner: my chicken noodle soup!

Ingredients – serves 2

1 litre of chicken stock (2 x stock cubes mixed with water is fine)

A chicken breast (skinless)

One sheet of medium egg noodles

A couple of tablespoons of sweetcorn (fresh or frozen)

A red chilli (seeds kept in or not depending on your preference!)

1 red onion

3 cloves of garlic

1 small peeled ginger root

2 teaspoons of soy sauce (reduced salt soy if you’re feeling healthy!)

The ingredients

Method

Start off by getting your stock cubes and mixing them up to make 1 litre of stock. This will act as your soup base. Once this is ready, you can set it aside and use it when you have finished the rest of your prep.

Slice your red onion in half, then into thin strips that are roughly the same size so they cook equally. Peel and chop your garlic and then peel and chop your ginger into similar sized pieces as your garlic.

Now, you have a decision to make: how spicy do you want your meal to be? We like our food nice and spicy so I went for a small regular chilli and cut it into thin circles and kept the seeds handy so I could add them into the soup.

After all this is done, you either need to just grab a skinless, boneless chicken breast from your multipack, or do as I did (this is for you penny pinchers out there and will feature in a later blog post!): carve up your whole chicken so as to remove the two breasts and put one in the fridge to use another night. If you want to do what I did, you need to carve up the whole chicken, keeping the bones for future stock, the thighs and drumsticks for a future meal, and the wings in a freezer bag for that indulgent USA themed night where you can simply pour hot sauce on your collected frozen wings.

Our butchered chicken!

However you do your chicken, you are now ready to get cracking! First up, get the stock on the hob in a saucepan and add your chicken (the whole breast without chopping it up!), garlic, chilli and ginger. Bring it to the boil, then turn the heat down to a simmer before covering the pan enough to keep the stock simmering. Do this for about 20 minutes (slightly longer if your chicken breast is enormous!).

After this time has passed, use a small bowl and two forks to take your chicken out of the pan while letting everything else simmer along nicely. With the forks, use one to hold down the chicken, and use the other to shred the chicken into thin strips.

Shredded chicken

This should allow the chicken to take on more flavour as it cooks and also means that you should get some bites of chicken in every spoonful of your soup! After you have done this, pop the chicken back in the soup pan, adding the onion, the sweetcorn, and most importantly the noodles and soy sauce!

Noodley goodness!

Allow everything to cook for about five minutes so the noodles turn nice and soft (less time is fine if you like your noodles a little more al dente), before pouring the soup into two bowls and tucking in!

A comforting bowl of soup

Comfort food at its tastiest: enjoy!