Get cozy this season with a bowl of this Creamy Chicken Noodle Soup. It comes together quickly with just five basic ingredients.
Soup season is here! And I am thrilled. A weekly soup night is a great way to use up what you have in the fridge and cupboards — and it’s ideal comfort food for hard days or when illness strikes.
Chicken Noodle Soup is by far a favorite of my family’s. There’s something so cozy and comforting about the rich broth, tender chicken, and toothsome noodles. It tops the list of my kids’ favorite soups.
When I was growing up, we only ate canned soup, and when we were sick, it was always chicken noodle. I remember one time when our neighbor Fayrene brought me some of her homemade chicken noodle soup after an illness. I had no idea you could make homemade chicken noodle soup! I still remember the thick noodles and bits of vegetables.
What ingredients do you need to make creamy chicken noodle soup?
This Creamy Chicken Noodle Soup is just like the one Fayrene brought me so long ago. One of the great things about it is that it’s made with just five main ingredients, all real food: chicken stock, egg noodles, mixed veggies, chicken, and homemade cream of chicken soup.
As I mentioned before, my Homemade Cream of Chicken Soup is a great soup starter. While you can certainly make it fresh in order to prepare this soup, I suggest making a few batches to keep on hand in the freezer. It makes this soup prep come together lickety-split. I suppose you could use canned, but I don’t recommend it. Make homemade for this recipe.
Can I make this soup in advance?
You can easily make a big batch of this soup and freeze it in meal-size containers — perfect for packing for work or to reheat for quick meals at home!
Pro tip: If you do make this soup to freeze, be sure to cook the noodles al dente. Noodles will soften more in the liquid, so if you freeze them a tad undercooked, everything should heat up really deliciously later.
Alternatively, if you make it a habit to make meal “components” to freeze, you could easily stash all the fixings in the freezer: bags of frozen mixed vegetables, cooked chicken, chicken stock, and cream of chicken soup. You can freeze the soup, too, of course, but keeping those components on hand gives you a lot more flexibility. You can easily whip up all kinds of casseroles, pot pies, and soups with those items on ice.
How to make this good and cheap:
Here are some of the strategies you can use to make this recipe more economical:
- Stock up on ingredients when they are on sale. For instance, when I see a great price on frozen veggies or chicken stock, I’ll buy 4-5 packages/containers and stash them for later.
- Use a whole chicken! Cooking a whole chicken (or buying one that Costco roasted for you) can be more economical than buying chicken pieces. Plus, you can use the carcass to make homemade stock. You can easily make this soup with turkey when the whole birds go on sale in the fall.
- Use up leftovers. I’m a big believer in tossing little bits of leftovers into the soup pot. They add great flavor and nothing goes to waste. Feel free to adapt this basic soup to use whatever meats or veggies you have on hand.
How I make this recipe easy:
Since one of you mentioned getting a rotisserie chicken every time you go to Costco, I’ve started doing the same. What a game changer! Having a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken makes my prep work a lot easier. The cost of the chicken is comparable to a whole chicken uncooked — and they taste great! Plus, the work is done for me.
Sometimes I just carve and cube the meat to freeze and then make stock from the bones. So convenient!
Having the right kitchen tools can really make your time in the kitchen more enjoyable. Over time, I’ve honed my collection so that they are perfect for my needs. Here are the tools that I use for this recipe:
- plastic cutting boards – I have blue boards for veggies and white boards for meat.
- Ergo Chef chef’s knife – I’ve had my set for several years and they work well.
- chili pot – I bought this pot in May and find that it’s perfect for making soup, chili, or quinoa.
- wooden spoon – I don’t think one can ever have too many wooden spoons!
- soup ladle – I used to have a large stainless steel one; I regret discarding it now.
- 6 cups chicken stock
- 6 ounces wide egg noodles
- 2 cups frozen mixed vegetables no need to thaw
- 2 cups Homemade Cream of Chicken Soup
- 2 cups cooked chopped chicken
- salt and pepper
- chopped scallions for garnish
- In a large pot, bring the chicken broth to a low boil. Add the noodles and cook for five minutes.
- Add the vegetables, cream of chicken soup, and chicken. Stir well to combine. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
- Serve hot, garnished with chopped scallions.
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That soup looks so delicious; I want to crawl through the computer screen and eat some!! We love soup too and at this time of year, I try to have a soup night on a regular basis. It’s so hot and inviting on these cooler and soon to be freezing nights. Since the weather started changing, I’ve already made four different kinds of soup, including chicken rice with vegetables, bean soup with sliced hot dogs and elbows, tomato basil, and Meatball Tortellini. Sometimes, I make a loaf of bread machine bread to go with it. This week I will be making pea soup and your ham and swiss sliders. I saw them on your post a few weeks back and they looked so good so that day, I bought what I needed and made a whole batch of them and put them in the freezer knowing I was going to be making this meal shortly. Never had them before but they looked so good and the fact that they could be made ahead and frozen was something I was interested in trying. I’ve already printed that recipe as I have so many of your other recipes and put it in my cooking binder. By the way, on another note, I had my mother over for dinner two weeks ago and I made home made tomato basil soup and along with that I made your Croque Monsieur sandwiches. I’ve made them several times and they are a huge hit. 🙂
Yay for Croque Monsieurs! I hope you like the sliders, too.
your recipes sound so good but I do not see the recipe for Homemade Cream of Chicken soup
You can find it here: https://goodcheapeats.com/2016/08/homemade-cream-of-chicken-soup-for-cooking/
This recipe sounds so good and so easy to make. Instead of Homemade Cream of Chicken Soup can I use just the regular Cream of Chicken Soup by Campbell’s in a can and if so how many can/s do I use? Thank you for the wonderful recipe. I am looking forward to making this soon.
Mary J
You can certainly try that, but it’s not something I’ve tested. My family doesn’t care for the canned kind, but if yours does, I don’t see any reason why it won’t work.
This looks amazing and easy — love it! My boys won’t eat any soup that is “creamy.” Could I use just more chicken broth instead of the cream of chicken soup? I guess I will try it and see! But curious if you have tried it yourself. 🙂 Thanks!
You definitely can, just know that it’s not overly “creamy”. Basically the cream of chicken soup helps thicken the broth just a bit.
After reading the cream of chicken soup recipe, I kind of want to try it out to see! Or at least do half of the cream of chicken and half of just chicken broth. I love the idea of picking up a rotisserie chicken from Sam’s Club whenever I’m there too, what a great idea!
Yes, and if you want, you can make that cream of chicken with all broth instead of adding the milk. It won’t be cream soup — it’ll be gravy! — but it thickens soup really nicely.
I made this with canned cream of chicken soup and cream of celery soup. I added carrots and celery
and thyme, it is delicious, will freeze it for lunches
Good to know. Thanks, Cathy. Glad you enjoyed it!
I’m making stock in my instant pot so I can make this soup tonight! I think I may adapt it to the slow cooker. I’m making two batches of stock – one for the homemade cream of chicken and the second for the soup. My breadmaker is also being put to use! I’m using all my appliances today, just because I can (and because it frees me up to tend to the sickies home from school). Thanks for all the recipes – I love feeding my family and you help make that possible. Happy Thanksgiving!
Isn’t it a great feeling when you’ve got electronic servants doing your work? I love it!
Could I use more cream of chicken soup to make this creamier? If so, how much should I reduce the chicken broth? I want to be sure to have enough to cook the egg noodles.
Sure. I made this last night and just eyeballed it. For each cup of cream of chicken, I’d reduce the chicken broth by 1/2 cup. Alternatively, you could swap milk for broth, 1-for-1.
I just made this soup. Delicious!!!! How do you keep from losing all the broth after it has finished cooking? Also, what is considered to be a serving size?
Not sure what you mean about losing the broth? As for serving size, that varies. I would say 8 to 16 ounces.