Making a simple pot of soup is something every man should be able to do. It doesn’t have to have 91 ingredients, it doesn’t have to take 6 hours it just has to be good.

This particular recipe takes things you should have on hand anyway, except for the chicken:

Carrots

Celery

Chicken Stock

Noodles

A cooked chicken.

I like to get those cooked chickens from Walmart at about 7:30 PM when they go on sale for half price or less. They are usually dry looking, wrinkled and probably headed for the trash if no one buys them soon after that. This is a horrible disrespect to a chicken that gave it’s life for our carnivorous enjoyment. One good thing about them is that they are full of seasoning. This will help our soup.

I’m going to break in my new Paula Deen 12 Quart Stockpot with this batch.

First add 2 qts chicken stock, 1/2 pound of sliced or baby carrots and sliced celery to your soup pot. Don’t get all hung up on exact measurements there Betty, add what you want. *DON’T ADD SALT OR PEPPER* That chicken’s got plenty.

Stick that whole bird in the pot and add some water to almost cover the chicken.

When your wife asks you WTF you are doing putting a whole chicken in the pot tell her to hush. Put the lid on the pot, bring to a boil, then bring it down just enough to stay piping hot for like an hour. That gives plenty of time to cook those carrots and chicken.

After an hour that old dried up bird is gong to be soft, tender and so juicy it’s amazing. What you have to do now is get it out of the pot and shred that meat off the bones. That chicken meat’s going to fall off the bones as soon as you look at it. You might need to fish it out with a smallish colander or have wifey help you fish it out of there without it if falling apart. If you touch it and it falls apart like mine do just pour it through the colander into another pot, fish the bones out of the colander and put the meat and stuff back in the pot. The bones are really going to just pull right off the meat and there’s a lot of tiny ones in there so be careful to get them all. I put a few chunks of skin back in the pot too.

Now you can check for taste. It’s probably salted fine but I do like to add a little pepper at this point. Now add the noodles, 8 ounces or more of fat old fashioned egg noodles are what I prefer, and cook them as recommended on their packaging.

Once the noodles are done, enjoy.