Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

What to do on a snowy day? Make a big pot of homemade chicken noodle soup! I just assembled my own recipe, so I thought I would share it here. I was inspired by this post from Renee Swope, who made her chicken noodle soup for us awhile ago and my kids loved it!

This is how I made ours:

I used some leftover chicken we had from two different meals last week-- rotisserie chicken and grilled chicken. I froze the shredded chicken meat and thawed it to use in the soup. Whenever you have leftover cooked chicken you can just throw it in a freezer bag til you get enough to use in soup or any other recipe that calls for cooked chicken.

I put the chicken in the crockpot and then I added 3 boxes of chicken broth-- the 16 oz size.

Then I got out my dutch oven and added cut up carrots (a bag of the baby carrots sliced into thin rounds), several stalks of celery diced fine and chopped onions. I also added salt, pepper and bay leaves, and covered it all with water. I brought that to a boil and then turned it down to simmer for about 30 minutes.

Then I dumped all of that-- including the water, which is now vegetable broth holding all the nutrients of the veggies-- into the crockpot. I added some garlic salt and about 1/2 a Tbsp of Italian seasoning. I am letting that cook all day and then just before serving will cook up a box of rotini pasta and add it. My kids like the fun twirly shapes.

I can smell the soup cooking and can't wait to eat it!