Deb Perelman’s Ginger Garlic Chicken Noodle Soup

“A deeply flavored chicken noodle soup you can make in 45 minutes is one we’re going to want to make as often as possible,” Deb Perelman writes in her new cookbook, Smitten Kitchen Keepers, and we couldn’t agree more. This ginger garlic chicken noodle soup recipe requires neither soup bones or bouillon (or even store-bought broth), yet tastes as comforting and rich as any homemade stock.

“On a cold winter weekend day when nobody wants to go outside,” she explains, “there are few better things than a pot of chicken noodle soup, quietly sim­mering on the stove while my family, in all likelihood, is glued to another Star Wars marathon. But on a cold winter weekend day when nobody wants to go outside but we also don’t want to spend the afternoon long-cooking a pot of bone broth? This, this is the soup we make.”

As it turns out, simply simmering boneless, skinless chicken thighs with aromatics in salted water can create a gentle but delicious soup base, but as Perelman explains, a few things are key: “Chicken thigh cutlets have more fat than breast cutlets,” she says, “and the richness helps build a more flavorful soup here. Adding the soy sauce, vinegar and sesame oil at the end as a salty, robust finish, versus cooking them into the broth, keeps them from getting lost in the soup. This gives it a bit of a hot-and-sour-soup note, too, which is also finished with vinegar.”

_{From Smitten Kitchen Keepers: New Classics for Your Forever Files by Deb Perelman. Copyright © 2022 by Deb Perelman. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.}