My Favorite Comfort Food - Chicken Noodle Soup

The rains have come early this year. My body, specifically my bones, joints, muscles hurt when it's cold. You'll know I'm not feeling well when I'm asking for soup. So what better way to soothe my aching body and spirit than with a hot bowl of homemade soup.

I don't eat instant noodles. I can't digest it. I don't know why. So when I want noodles, I make them from scratch, like this one. It's quite easy to make.

I just boiled some chicken breast fillet. Regular cut chicken will do because you'd have to remove the meat anyway and you can use the bones to make a nice chicken broth.

Cook the noodles according to package directions. I used Vietnamese egg noodles. I didn't have chicken broth the night I made this and this wasn't planned so I just mixed some stuff together for the soup.

I boiled a few cups of water then added chopped garlic and onions. I like them chopped because I want them in my soup and I would like to be able to eat them and not discard them like what we normally do when making broth. Remember, garlic is good for your blood pressure and onions are antioxidants.

I then added some carrots and siomai to the soup. I also added the sliced up chicken breast. For flavor, I splashed some fish sauce, light soy sauce (about a tablespoon) and a little liquid seasoning. I also added about half a sachet of Maggi Magic Sarap. You must think that the soup is already too salty at this point. Nope. I put a lot of water because we love soup at home - slurping (not sipping) hot soup, that is. Lastly, i dropped some bok choy into the soup. At this point the stove is already turned off. The heat of the soup is enough to cook the bok choy.

To assemble, just put some noodles in a bowl, place some siomai, veggies and chicken then pour the hot soup. You can top this with spring onions and some crunchy garlic bits. I served this with a soy sauce-calamansi dip for the siomai but MB even poured some on his soup. I guess he really likes the salty-tart flavor with the soup.

Definitely my personal Nirvana in a bowl.