Chicken & Vegetable Udon Soup

It is going to be unseasonably, record breakingly warm today. A high of 77F? Yes, please!

As much as I was ready for winter to be over, I have to admit, I love having a reason to sip on hot soups. This particular recipe was a completely spontaneous move that turned out to be rather delicious. I was planning on making some sort of chicken stir fry to eat with rice but when I left work that evening, it was 14F so I decided I needed a really comforting bowl of soup. So, I repurposed the stir fry ingredients into soup ingredients and grabbed a few blocks of udon noodles and made this glorious dish.

It's a quick one pot dish that comes together in about half an hour.

Ingredients [serves 4]:
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 teaspoon sesame oil
2 lbs. drumsticks
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 serrano pepper, sliced
4 oz. mushrooms, sliced
6 cupz water
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon miso paste
½ onion, sliced
1 carrot, diced
1 broccoli crown, cut into florets
4 servings udon noodles
4 eggs
2 cups baby spinach
scallion & sesame seeds

Start by chopping up the vegetables.

Grab your favorite soup pot and get it on the stove over medium heat. Add olive oil and sesame oil and once it's nice and hot, nestle in the chicken. Season liberally with salt and pepper and get a good sear on the meat. Once the chicken starts to take on some color, move it over to the side and toss in the mushrooms, onions, garlic, and peppers. Saute the vegetables until they're soft and then pour in the water.

Stir in some soy sauce and miso for flavor and bring the soup to a boil. Once the soup is boiling, add in the onions and carrots.

After a few minutes, the chicken should be cooked through. Remove the drumsticks and use two forks to shred the meat off of the bones. Put the meat back into the pot. Toss the bones back in too for added depth of flavor.

The last major step is to add in the broccoli, udon, and to poach some eggs in the broth. I like to make little nests in the noodles so that the eggs hold together.

For the final touch, wilt in some greens.

Serve a generous ladle of soup and noodles and place a poached egg on top. Garnish with chopped scallions and sesame seeds and dig in.

The soup is velvety and rich, thanks to the miso paste, and it's full of vegetables which makes it seem healthy, there's plenty of chicken to fill you up, and of course, my favorite part is the tender noodles. Oh, and my second favorite part is cutting open the egg and releasing the unctuous yolk.

Here's the recipe page: