Cream Cheese Chicken Noodle Soup

Start with a 6-quart pot. Add between 1 and 2 quarts of water to boil your chicken. In the meantime, start chopping the vegetables—dice up your onion, carrots and celery. By the time you’re finished with this, your chicken should be close to done. My chicken breasts usually only take about 20 minutes at a rolling boil; check it to make sure.

Remove your chicken from the water (stock) you’ve just boiled it in, and set it aside to cool for a few minutes. Turn heat down to just a simmer, add the veggies you just chopped and let simmer for 20–30 minutes. While the veggies are at work, start shredding your chicken. This takes forever no matter how many times I’ve done it before.

Once your chicken is all shredded, add the chicken broth, salt, pepper and chicken to the pot. Turn the heat up and bring back to a low boil.

Once everything is back to a low boil, you’ll finally add the good stuff! Toss in Reames egg noodles and green beans. Stir frequently for about 3–5 minutes; the egg noodles can get weird and stick together, but it’s only happened to me once.

Now for the last, and best part of all: the cream cheese. You’ll want to put it in the soup in clumps, about 1–2 tablespoons or so. That’s just an estimate though, don’t get technical, just eyeball it. As you drop your clumps in, push them below the surface so they’re entirely submerged. We want it to melt nicely.

No need to stir much, you’ll just make it separate and look really strange (again I did this the first couple times I made this and it turned out weird-looking, but tasted great). It takes about 5 minutes to melt entirely.

The end. I usually leave this to simmer, as low of a setting as I can, for 1–3 hours. Just depends how far in advance I’ve made it. This soup is thick and hearty, great with sourdough. It becomes very thick like a casserole in a couple of hours, and then can be eaten with a fork! Hope you enjoy!