I do almost exactly the same as above with the rotisserie chicken in a pinch. For special occasions or for friends with colds, I do something special, but it takes a bit of work:

1) Use a large, whole, raw chicken instead of a rotisserie chicken. Add in a couple of Cornish game hens if you want to be extra-fancy. Cornish game hens are the bacon of birds. Umami bombs.

2) Bake the chicken in the oven at 400 for about 20-25 mins, maybe less depending on your oven. The game hens, if you used them, will be done quick, maybe 15 mins. It is ok if the chicken is not 100% cooked when you take it out of the oven. You are just trying to get it done enough to pick the meat off the bone. Chop it and put it in the fridge while you do everything else.

3) Chop your celery and onions. Keep all of the celery leaves and roots and everything from the onion you aren't going to use except the very outer paper part of the skin. These will be your stock vegetable parts. For one large whole chicken, I usually use 2 bunches of celery and almost a pound of carrots, but I like lots of vegetables in the soup. They are good for you and it makes the soup go a lot further. I love garlic, but this is the only dish that I don't use garlic in. But, people have preferences. Preferences aren't wrong, unless you prefer soggy noodles.

4) pressure cook the carcasses and your stock vegetable parts for at least an hour, up to 4 hours. Add in any chicken necks (but not organs like livers or hearts) that were provided. If you have frozen leftover chicken bones from the last time you cooked chicken, add those. (don't EVER throw away chicken bones unless they have been smoked. They are precious. Because....soup). If you have left-over turkey carcass, add that. Don't pressure cook over 4 hours, or you will burn the bones a bit.

5) Strain the broth and simmer the vegetables in the broth with your poultry seasonings. One seasoning I like to add that is different is Summer Savory. Cook until vegetables are tender, about an hour. Add the meat just before serving. If your meat is not 100% done, it will be finished as soon as your stock returns to a simmer, just below boiling.

6) Cook the noodles separate in water. Drain and keep separate to keep them from getting soggy. Do not put the noodles into the soup until you serve, they are to be kept separate. Even for leftovers, store the noodles and the soup separately, and only combine just when serving. To repeat, never, ever, prior to serving, shall the soup and noodles intermingle. They are to be kept separate like co-ed teenage campers at a Christian summer camp. This is a very good recipe, given to me by my grandmother and perfected over decades, and your kids-kids are potentially going to use it in the future. If you store your noodles in your soup in the fridge, they will too. If that happens, I will come out of the grave and haunt your arse for the sin of promoting soggy noodles. I have strong feelings about this. If you hate soggy noodles as much as I do, maybe also substitute mini-penne for egg noodles. I use 1 lb of mini-penne per chicken.

7) If this is done right, when you refrigerate the leftover soup, separate from your leftover noodles, the soup will condense into a Aspic; basically gelatin with vegetables and meat in suspension. If you can serve leftovers from the fridge into a bowl with a fork, pat yourself on the back, you did a great job.

One important thing about chicken soup is that the gelatin that you are extracting from the bones encourages your immune system to produce macroph a ges, reduce inflammation, and produce more white blood cells. This makes sense, as you are basically extracting bone marrow, which is where your immune system lives, into the gelatin. Gelatin is also not fat. It is a combination of proteins and fiber. It will not make you fat.

Macroph a ges are really, really good at fighting, guess what? viruses. Chicken soup really is good for your cold. The vitamins from the carrots will also help.

If your friend has a cold, cook them some amazing chicken soup. They will love you forever.

This will make a massive amount of soup, between 1.5 and 2.5 gallons. Freeze some of it, without noodles in it, for the next time YOU get a cold.

Edit: apparently P-H-A-G gets filtered because some people are jerks and like to call other people stupid things. But, Macrop-h-a-g-es really are helpful.

If you really want to go next level, clarify the stock. The only issue I have with pressure cooker stock is you can't skim it, so all the fat and detritus ends up emulsified into the stock. Clarifying it and making it into a consomme fixes that.

I have done this before, but:

1) I didn't really notice a difference in taste.
2) It takes 8 hours to make good stock on the stove. The pressure cooker makes it faster. This thing is a bit of a slog as it is.
3) I was worried I was taking some of the immune system goodie out of the soup by making it clearer. No science behind that, just a worry.

Clarified stock obviously looks a lot better.

In your opinion, does clarifying the stock help the flavor? A pro might know the answer to that better than me.

BusterAg said:

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I have done this before, but:

1) I didn't really notice a difference in taste.
2) It takes 8 hours to make good stock on the stove. The pressure cooker makes it faster. This thing is a bit of a slog as it is.
3) I was worried I was taking some of the immune system goodie out of the soup by making it clearer. No science behind that, just a worry.

Clarified stock obviously looks a lot better.

In your opinion, does clarifying the stock help the flavor? A pro might know the answer to that better than me.

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I've found that a clarified stock tastes "cleaner," if that makes sense. If I'm making stock for a stock-based soup like chicken noodle, tortilla, or matzo ball and I've made the base stock in a pressure cooker, I clarify it. Otherwise, I don't. When I do the clarification, I add some ground chicken breast to help solidify the raft and add back some meatiness.

Question … what's the trick to get a clearer stock? It's been a family tradition to have chicken soup at all our family gatherings. Growing up in a Czech family it was a staple. Mom passed in August and my first attempt I had a cloudy dark stock. I'm digging the instapot process and the idea of keeping noodles separate makes sense.

When we visit family in Czech Republic they put the dried noodles in the bowl and add the stock and chicken to it and it was amazing.

As outlined above, there are a couple of ways. If you want to go the stovetop route, it's imperative that the stock be repeatedly skimmed to fish out all the impurities and detritus, and to never let it get above a bare simmer while cooking. A bubble a second is about as hot as it should be. Any hotter, and the agitation emulsifies fats and other gunk and makes the stock cloudy. Doing it this way takes a while, which is why most restaurants that do this leave it overnight on a very, very low burner to cook. Once it is strained and fat skimmed, you'll get a very clear stock; it just takes a while.

The not necessarily faster, and easier way is to make it in a pressure cooker and cook it for about 2 hours, then depressurize naturally. Letting it depressurize naturally keeps it from boiling once you take off the lid, which mixes all the gunk up, to a degree. The problem with this method is that you don't get a gin-clear stock because you don't have the opportunity to skim it. You can use this stock in this state, and it's still really good and magnitudes better than anything you can get at the store. If you want to take it next level, proceed to the next step.

The solution to a cloudy stock is to chill down the stock, pull off the fat (save that precious fat for roasting potatoes or making matzo ball soup), and clarify it by making a consumme. Here's how you do that. Take a gallon of cold stock, and put it in a large pot. Take an onion, 2-3 stalks of celery, 2-3 carrots, some leek tops if you have them, a handful or two of parsley stems and five egg whites and their shells, and blitz that in a food processor until it's fairly fine. Combine that with a pound of ground chicken breast meat, and mix all of that into your stock. It's going to look nasty when you do this; it's supposed to. Turn on the heat to about medium, and stir this mess fairly often to keep everything from settling to the bottom. When it starts to come together and solidify into a raft on top of the stock, stop stirring, and turn down the heat to low. Poke a hole or two in the top of the raft to allow the stock underneath somewhere to go. If you don't do this, the heat and pressure from underneath will break apart the raft, and this won't work. Occasionally ladle some stock from those holes over the top, and let this run for about 30 minutes. Let it cool for about 10 minutes before you carefully strain it through a very fine strainer, or a not so fine strainer lined with cheesecloth. You will lose about 25% of your stock, as some of it will soak into the meat and vegetables, but you'll be left with something you could read a newspaper through underneath it, with a very deep chicken flavor. To me, it's worth doing for a stock-based soup.

Thanks so much for the detail provided. I've seen 2 ways that contributed to my cloudy stock. I always enjoy your input on the Food Forum