Simply the best chicken soup you ever had.....

Those that know me know well that I'm a prodigious home cook, not a chef by any rate just a guy who is passionate about cooking awesome food for his family and friends.  I do all of our cooking and love it!  It's honestly one of the best parts of my day, and being that we're now into autumn I wanted share something.  It's a different kind of art, as it does come in various guises right?  Smoked Chicken Soup with Fresh Parmesan, Asiago, and Romano.

It's easy to make, but admittedly a bit time consuming but well, well worth it.

I use a whole chicken, any size or type will do as long as it fits in your boiling pot of course.

I won't get too deep into this but I like to smoke the whole chicken beforehand.  You can do this on any charcoal grill with a lid-I've even used my little weber to do it!.  Keep the temp low and the heat indirect as you are really trying to cold smoke the chicken, to get all that smoky flavor but without cooking and consequently drying out the chicken.  I usually smoke as prodigiously as I can for 1/3 to half the alloted time it would take to smoke the whole bird to fully cooked.  (Don't worry there's an easy quick alternative I'll go into in the end if you feel that smoking a chicken is too daunting.)

From here get the chicken(whole into your now boiling pot of Lightly salted (don't oversalt the water-add your salt at the end-easy to add hard to take out sort of thing) water and boil it on medium heat until the chicken is falling off the bone tender-2-3 hours usually but sometimes it's faster.

Remove the chicken completely from the broth you just made, remove as much of the meat as you want to use, save/or discard the rest.  I have dogs so getting rid of the fat and whatever I don't want to use is a cinch.  Bones hit the trash of course.

Add 4-5 bay leaves to the broth as well as about 1 tsp pepper-any you desire-White, Black, Cayenne, doesn't matter.

Return the chicken to the broth and now add cut up onions(1-2 decent ones) crushed, or minced fresh garlic-to taste-, Cut up carrots, celery if you wish, and egg noodles-any type will work but I find that homeade ones really are much better.  If you have a pasta roller I say go for it!

If you like garden greens in soup you can add them during the last half of the boil with no problem-any variety will do.  I put fresh Kale in my soups all the time.  Spinach also works really well.

Boil until vegetables are done and noodles are nicely tender.

Dish out into bowls sprinkle quite liberally with the Fresh Parmesan, Asiago, and Romano blend-I mean any or all of these, or others will work.  This is just the way I do it because this is our favorite blend from the store.  ie-Manchego is great in this soup all by itself.  Don't be afraid to experiment.

Sprinkle a pinch of Kosher Salt into every bowl....

Eat Much!

Now for the easy alternative I mentioned:  If you are in a time pinch or just don't want to go through the smoking hassles, etc.  I have found that you can make the soup exactly as described-sans chicken smoking of course- and when you add the bay leaves add about 1- tbsp of liquid smoke extract to the broth-Honestly it comes out really good this way so don't be afraid to try it.

All in all and different way to have chicken soup but an incredibly enjoyable one that I really wanted to share.  If you come up with any variations on this you love, I'd love to hear about them.