Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

Seriously this is one of the easiest things to make ever. And it tastes so much better homemade!

Shopping List
2 boxes chicken broth
1 lb boneless skinless chicken (either breasts or thighs, either frozen or thawed - breasts are white meat and more expensive, thighs are dark meat and cheaper. Some people only like one type of meat or the other. I usually cook with dark meat as we buy organic meat, which is already more expensive, so I try to cut costs by buying the cheaper meat)
1 lb carrots
1 bunch celery
1 onion
1 lb pasta (any kind you want, but usually the smaller kinds work better than spaghetti noodles or other long pastas. I like farfalle, which is bow tie shaped pasta, or little star shaped pasta, or egg noodles. Traditional chicken noodle soup uses egg noodles.)
Salt and Pepper

Start cooking about 60 mins before you want to eat

Dump the chicken broth into a large pot with a lid. Cover and cook over med-high heat. Dump in chicken (if it's frozen, don't bother thawing it first). Set timer for 20 mins.

While the chicken is cooking, wash about 5 carrots. Pull 5 stalks of celery off the bunch and wash them. Cut the tops and bottoms off both the celery and and carrots, then cut them into slices. They will not change size as they cook, so cut them into the size you want them to be when you eat the soup. Cut up your onion as well. The easiest way to do this is to cut off the top and bottom of the onion, then cut it in half longways (from top to bottom). Then pull off the top two layers and put each half cut-side down on the cutting board. Slice each half like an apple, then cut each slice into chunks.

When your timer goes off, use tongs to pull the chicken out of the soup and put it on a plate. Dump the vegetables into the soup and put the cover back on.

Cut up the cooked chicken (it's ok if it's not completely cooked as you're putting it back in the soup and it will finish cooking - it's just easier to cut up cooked chicken than raw chicken). Cut it into medium sized strips, then cut each strip into chunks. When you're done, dump the chicken back into the pot. Add the pasta at this point as well. Make sure to stir it every few minutes so the pasta doesn't stick together.

How long you need to cook it after adding the pasta depends on the kind of pasta you're using. Check the package to see how long it's supposed to cook for, then set your timer for that amount of time.

When the timer goes off, turn the stove off and taste a bit of the soup (careful - it will be very hot!) to see if you think it needs salt or pepper. If you decide it does, add it a little bit at a time. You can always add more, but you can't take it out if you add too much :) The easiest way to do this is to dump it into your palm so you can see how much you're adding.

That's it; you're done :)