Oriental chicken noodle soup recipe

Try this delicious Oriental chicken noodle soup recipe is from Woman's Weekly. This quick soup taking only 10 mins to prep and 15 mins to cook, is infused with ginger and chilli and serves 4 people. When you're under the weather, you can't get better than hot chicken soup to nurse you back to good health again. A portion of this healthy Chinese soup works out at only 287 calories per serving. This soup is really easy to make and is cheap too. If you're looking to cut the cost of this soup down even more, use pre-cooked chicken thigh.

Ingredients

• 1.5litres (2½ pints) chicken stock
• 5cm (2in) piece fresh root ginger, unpeeled and sliced
• 2 cloves garlic, unpeeled and bruised
• 1 red chilli, halved and deseeded
• 2 large, or 4 small, pak choi
• 100g (3½oz) medium egg noodles
• 4 spring onions, trimmed and finely sliced
• 125g (4oz) cooked chicken, finely shredded
• Good dash of soy sauce
• 2 star anise
• Handful of shredded basil leaves or chopped coriander leaves

Method

1. For the chicken stock: Put the chicken bones and any pieces of skin, leftover roast onion and garlic in a large pan with an unpeeled onion, cut into wedges, a large carrot and leek tops, chopped, a good sprinkling of salt, about eight peppercorns, a couple of bay leaves, a few thyme sprigs and a handful of parsley. Add enough cold water to cover well.
2. Bring to the boil, then simmer for a couple of hours, half covered. Strain into a large jug.
3. Discard all the bones and veg.
4. For the soup: Simmer the stock in a large pan and add in the star anise, ginger, garlic and half of the chilli, for 10 mins, without boiling.
5. Meanwhile, trim the ends off the pak choi and separate the leaves. Cut the white part into fine strips and shred the leaves.
6. Remove the flavourings from the stock with a slotted spoon and discard them. Add the noodles to the boiling stock, stir them in and simmer for
7. 3 mins. Add the spring onion and white parts of the pak choi, bring to the boil, then add the chicken and soy sauce. Sprinkle the pak choi leaves on top and steam them for 1 min.
8. Ladle the soup into bowls and scatter with fine slivers of chilli and basil or coriander. (Not suitable for freezing).