Chicken Macaroni with Cheese

This is not a baked recipe my friends, it was soup. The weather is cold and rainy and soup is what my mind tells me to prepare. It as just a patterned recipe although what I just added was cheese because there was no evaporated milk available here. I don’t like to use fresh milk and I don’t have the time to go out so in order for my soup to be cloudy a bit and to make it milky, I used a regular cheddar cheese.

I did not grate it; I just cut it into smaller cubes. It tastes great and it was still a delicious soup. Before, I was able to share here about chicken soup but I used penne pasta. Now I did use elbow macaroni and cabbage. If you have carrots, it would even be better to look at plus sprinkle it with fresh celery.




You can use butter for frying the chicken first. But I what I did use was a normal vegetable oil and I see to it that the chicken was light brown in color before you sauté it in garlic and onion and add some chicken bouillon cube before putting water for the soup.

It is up to you how much water would you like to put. This depends on the number of chicken that you have and for how many persons should you serve your soup. You can only put the cabbage once your macaroni is 75% done so you don’t over cook your veggie.

I also use fish sauce here as well as salt and pepper for seasoning. If you don’t have fish sauce, it’s okay. You can just use plain salt and ground black pepper to taste. It will only take 3 to 4 minutes to get your chicken done before you add your macaroni. About the macaroni, this will take about 5-8 minutes (this depends on the brand) of macaroni that you are using so just look at the instruction on the label.

You can also add other veggies to your soup like green beans but I still prefer to use only cabbage, carrot or you can add some corn kernels and mushrooms too. This recipe is just easy to make so I do hope you try it also.

Chicken soup with Penne

My stomach felt really bad last week so I needed some chicken soup to eat and this is what I have prepared. I ran out of macaroni so I have substituted penne pasta. I know that penne can only be good to eat on arrabiata or any pasta meal which is rich in sauce. But I have just tried an experiment to see what penne can also do with any chicken soup.

Indeed it has no difference to macaroni in taste but the only thing is that it is harder to cook. I mean it takes longer period of time to make it aldente. Usually penne pasta takes 10-12 minutes of cooking but this one took me 15 minutes to satisfy my taste bud. I don’t like to chew on hard or half cooked pasta so I see to it that I needed those extra minutes to make it softer.
In preparing this dish, you just needed to boil your chicken first before sautéing it in garlic and onion.


Chicken soup with penne pasta


Personally, I don’t like bloody chicken which means when you cut the inner part, there are still traces of clot in between bones and fleshy part. That is why 10 minutes of boiling is convenient for me before I put cooking oil and sauté it with garlic and onions.

I also included some chicken bouillon cubes to make the taste more delicious. If there was a veggie that you can include in your chicken soup, that will be carrots but at that time I don’t have one so you won’t be seeing any. Once the chicken is done for sautéing, you need to put chicken stock or water if you don’t have any stock, then put the penne pasta.

You can add milk to this dish as long as your milk is evaporated and not condensed or powdered. But if you don’t have milk, you can substitute any quick melt cheese and that will be sufficient enough.

Chicken Sotanghon

This is the remaining sotanghon left on the pack I bought back home since I won’t be able to get some bean thread noodle or vermicelli like this. Anyway another chicken recipe to share which I am sure most of you know if you’re a Filipino.


Let's swim for Chicken Sotanghon Soup!


Chicken Sotanghon soup is favored especially during cold rainy season just like Tinola recipe. I used to remember that there is really a similarity between the two although in Chicken sotanghon, you don’t include sayote or any green leafy veggie. I always like chicken sotanghon in a cup were I can always carry when I go to office since we do have hot and cold water dispenser. Even if it’s not that healthy to consider because of its ingredients, I still can taste the flavor of that chicken soup in an instant. Anyway here is my rendition of Chicken Sotanghon recipe.

Ingredients:

½ kilo chicken (cut into parts)
1 medium onion (chopped)
Fish sauce
1 lady finger chili
Sotanghon (vermicelli) 1 rolled portion
2 Garlic cloves (chopped)
Ginger (cut into thin strips)
Oil
Salt
Ground black pepper
Water


Check the vermicelli in this chicken soup



Preparation / Method on how to cook Chicken Sotanghon :

Step 1: Clean the chicken first by washing it in running water. Next you need to rub it with salt to remove the unpleasant odor.

Step 2: Prepare the pan and put the chicken pieces into it with half a teacup water and salt and let it simmer for some time. Once the water is drained, that is the time that you need to put oil.

Step 3: Sauté the chicken till it gets light brown once you put the cooking oil. The next step will be putting the garlic first and then the onions. Stir the chicken well together with the ingredients and once your onion is light brown in color, you can now put your ginger which is cut into strips before adding some fish sauce for about 2-3 tbsp.

Step 4: The next step will be adding the lady finger chili as you put ample enough of water into your chicken. You can also use chicken stock if you like or add some chicken bouillon cubes into the water that you place for your soup. Don’t worry, this recipe is a soup, so you can let those chicken pieces swim a lot.