Rotisserie Chicken Noodle Soup

Making the Most of a Rotisserie Chicken

One store-bought chicken gives you right around 3-4 cups of shredded meat, which is exactly what this soup needs. Pull the meat off while the bird is still warm, and don’t feel like you have to measure. If you end up with a little extra, toss it in.

A few things worth knowing before you shred:

• Use both the white and dark meat. The thigh and leg meat brings more flavor and stays tender in the broth, so don’t leave it behind.
• Skip the skin. It turns soft and rubbery in soup instead of adding anything.
• Save the carcass. Once the meat is off, the bones are worth holding onto. More on that below!

If you don’t have a rotisserie chicken, you can poach about 1½ pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts or thighs in water for 15 to 18 minutes, then shred them with two forks. It adds about 20 minutes to the recipe, but the soup turns out just as good.

How to Make Rotisserie Chicken Noodle Soup

Everything happens in one pot, and the whole thing moves fast once the vegetables are in. Have your chicken shredded before you start! Here’s how it goes:

Step 1: Soften the Vegetables

Heat the olive oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Add the diced onion, carrots, and celery and cook for 5 to 7 minutes, stirring now and then, until the onion turns translucent and the carrots start to give (but don’t mush) when you press one against the side of the pot. Add the garlic and cook about 30 seconds more, just until you can smell it.

Garlic burns fast at this temperature, so don’t walk away. If it starts to brown, get the broth in right away.

Step 2: Add the Broth and Chicken

Stir in the thyme, bay leaf, chicken broth, and shredded chicken. Bring it up to a boil, which takes 5 to 10 minutes with this much liquid, then lower the heat and let it simmer uncovered for about 15 minutes. The carrots should slide off a fork when they’re ready.

Leaving the lid off lets a little liquid cook away and concentrates the flavor. Covered, the broth stays thin and tastes watered down.

⇢ Use the carcass if you have time. Simmering the picked-over bones in the broth for 20 to 30 minutes before you add the chicken gives you a richer, more savory base. My Chicken Broth Recipe walks through the same idea from scratch.

Step 3: Simmer the Noodles

Stir in the uncooked egg noodles and simmer about 5 minutes, until they’re tender but still a little firm. They’ll keep cooking in the hot broth while you finish the soup and ladle it out, so it’s better to stop a minute early than a minute late.

⇢ Swap the noodle shape if you’d like. Rotini, ditalini, bowties, or cut spaghetti all work. Follow the timing on your package, since shapes cook at different rates. My Homemade Egg Noodles are worth the effort if you have an afternoon.

⇢ Leave the vegetables out for a simpler bowl. If your family just wants chicken, noodles, and broth, my Chicken and Noodles is just that.

Step 4: Season and Serve

Take the pot off the heat and fish out the bay leaf. Stir in the chopped parsley and the lemon juice, then taste and add salt and pepper. Ladle into bowls while it’s hot.

The lemon juice is optional, but it’s the thing that keeps the broth from tasting heavy. You won’t taste lemon in the finished soup, just a brighter, cleaner flavor.

How to Season Chicken Noodle Soup

This is where most bowls of chicken noodle soup go wrong. The broth tastes thin, the whole thing needs something, and it’s hard to say what! Usually it comes down to three things:

Start with the herbs in the recipe. Thyme and a bay leaf do most of the work here, and fresh parsley at the end adds a clean, grassy note that dried parsley can’t match. If you want something more, dill, rosemary, sage, oregano, or chives all belong in chicken soup. So does a teaspoon of poultry seasoning if you like a shortcut.

Season at the end, not the beginning. Store-bought broth already has salt in it, and so does rotisserie chicken. If you salt at the start, you’re guessing. Wait until everything has simmered together, taste it, then add salt in small amounts until the flavors sharpen up. That moment where it goes from flat to delicious usually happens with less salt than you’d expect.

If it still tastes flat, it probably needs acid. This is the fix most people forget! A tablespoon of lemon juice or a splash of white wine vinegar at the very end lifts everything without making the soup taste sour. Try that before you add more salt.

Storage and Reheating

To store: Let the soup cool, then refrigerate it in an airtight container for 3 to 4 days. That holds whether you used rotisserie chicken or cooked your own.

To reheat: Warm it in a covered saucepan over low heat, just until it’s hot through. Individual bowls reheat in the microwave in 1 to 2 minutes. Either way, stop as soon as it’s warm, since the noodles keep softening every time the soup gets hot.

To freeze: Freeze for up to 1 month. Cooked noodles turn mushy after freezing and thawing, so freeze the soup before the noodles go in if you can.

To make ahead: Cook the soup through Step 2 and stop before the noodles. Cool it and refrigerate up to 3 days or freeze up to 1 month. When you’re ready to eat, bring it back to a simmer, stir in the noodles, and finish the recipe. The soup tastes just as good, and the noodles are fresh.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I make this in the slow cooker?

Yes, with one adjustment for the noodles. Add everything except the noodles and parsley, then cook on low for 4 to 6 hours or high for 2 to 3 hours. Since the chicken is already cooked, you’re really just softening the vegetables and giving the broth time to take on flavor. 

Stir the noodles in during the last 20 to 30 minutes on high, because they’ll turn to mush if they sit in hot broth all afternoon.

Can I cook the noodles separately?

Yes, and it’s worth doing any time you expect leftovers. Boil them in a separate pot, drain, and add a scoop to each bowl before you ladle the soup over top. Noodles that sit in broth keep absorbing liquid, so by the next day they’re bloated and there’s noticeably less broth left in the pot. It costs you one extra pot and solves the problem completely.

Can I use frozen vegetables instead of fresh?

Yes, and it’s a reasonable shortcut on a busy night. A bag of frozen mirepoix or mixed vegetables both work here. Skip the sauté step, since frozen vegetables are already blanched and won’t brown anyway, and stir them in with the broth instead. They soften faster than fresh, so start checking around 10 minutes rather than 15.

More Easy Chicken Soups

• Chicken Vegetable Soup
• Lemon Chicken Orzo Soup
• Chicken Tortellini Soup
• Farmhouse Chicken and Rice Soup
• Easy Chicken Gnocchi Soup