Fuelled by a comment made my my 5 year old (who constantly reminds me that she is 5 and a half!) that I haven’t made chicken and noodle soup in a long time, I whacked one up today in 10 minutes, and it must have been pretty good, because it is being touted by all as their most favourite soup. That is a tall order. I was pretty pleased with myself considering I just pulled things out of the cupboard and didn’t follow a recipe.

Now that we buy organic chickens, and they cost an absolute fortune, I have taken to roasting them and then collecting all the bones and uneaten bits and making chicken stock. So in my freezer I had some uneaten chicken legs soaked in stock, which had all the residue of roasted pumpkin, potato, parsnip, carrot, onion and lots and lots of garlic.

Ingredients

• Chicken stock, and any left over bits of chicken meat (for this I used the meat off a few chicken legs), and a few other random bits of chicken meat that were pulled off the roast.
• 4 spring onions, sliced
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon hoisin sauce
• Optional 1 or 2 teaspoons sambal oelek
• 270g udon noodles – the supermarket sells an organic variety – cool!

What you will need

• Large saucepan

What to do

1. Heat the stock
2. Remove the meat from any bones and put into the soup
3. Add enough water to the stock to bring it up to a desired level
4. Add the soy, sesame oil and hoisin sauce
5. Add the udon noodles and spring onion
6. Heat until the noodles are cooked (about 5 mins)
7. Garnish with more spring onion if desired

Served 4 hungry people. I added some sambal oelek to my bowl so that it was taken from kiddy-licous to a more adult zone.