Chicken Soup, the most well known of all the soups. Its healing powers torn between scientific study and the wisdom of generations. Science or Mysticism doesn’t really matter for us because we like to save money and when it’s been negative degrees outside for over a week, soup amazing. And here’s a link directly to the recipe because, as much as would love for you to read the whole post, even I dislike long explanations when I’m recipe hunting.

But this blog isn’t about recipes it’s about growing and making money and step one to growing money is saving money. So here we go. From the youngest times I can remember when I was sick or it was super cold out my Uncle Pete would make this soup. It’s the soup I made when my now wife cancelled our second date because she was sick, and it’s a soup I’ve handed out to countless friends, family, and co-workers.

Ingredients are simple. Chicken, Water, Carrots, Celery, Onion. Egg Noodles. Seasonings: Salt, Pepper, and occasionally garlic to taste.

This time, I remembered to record my purchases so I can actually bring receipts.

It was too cold for me to store hop, which is what I would normally do. Aldi’s is great for many things, but meat prices are rarely good. So I think this could of been done much cheaper. I also went overboard on chicken this time (between 4 and 5 pounds). But that actually allowed me to make even more soup. So lets look at our list because obviously I bought other things at the same time:

Ingredient	Price
2.3 pounds of Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts	$8.31
2.2 pounds of Boneless Skinless Thighs	$6.67
Wide Egg Noodles (largest bag)	$1.74
Celery whole	$1.89
Carrots whole	$1.89
Onion Yellow	$1.99
Total	$22.50

Canned chicken noodle, range locally from $1.15 (Campbells) to $0.70 (Aldi and Great Value). 1 can of Campbells says it’s 2.5 servings. Which is tracked at 1 cup prepared soup between the can contents and the added 1 cup of water. I’m using Souper Cubes (Affiliate Link) These are also 1 cup portions so we’ll just call it 1 cup vs 1 cup. Since we’re still sticking to my $350/m food budget I definitely want my fresh ingredient soup to work out to sub $0.70 per cup. That means I need 33 cups out of this. I only have 8 cups I can freeze at a time so it’s been taking me a few days to work through the pot, and we ate like 8 bowls.

Anyway I’ll track that at the end. Making the soup: Bone in chicken is better but you have to scoop the bones out and sometimes its more work than value. I fill my pot about halfway and toss all the chicken into the pot and get it set to high so we can reach boiling temperature while we cut veggies. I wash the carrots and celery and cut off the root ends. Carrots are chopped into medallions, and the celery is as well including the leafy ends. Then I normally only dice two onions, but since I had so much chicken I used three this time.

Once I put all the veggies in I add water to as high as I’m comfortable going in my pot, planning for the noodles to be added later. Once it reaches a rolling boil, reduce to simmer. This is usually where I add my Jar Garlic, but my mom doesn’t even put garlic in hers. Mine cooked for around 6 hours before the chicken was falling apart in shredded pieces. Once the chicken does that I dump the noodles in and after a few more minutes it’s ready to eat. Salt and pepper to taste in the pot.

After dinner I started filling up my freezer cubes, a process I’m still working through. My wife thought I had made it too thick this time, so I ended up adding more water and half of an open chicken broth box from the fridge to give us some more broth-y frozen cubes.

Uncle Pete’s Recipe:

Short and Sweet:
Several pounds of chicken (minimum 2)
1 bag of whole carrots, washed, cut into medallions
1 bag of whole celery, washed, chopped including leafy bits.
2-3 whole onions
1 bag of Egg Noodles

Instructions:

Simmer in pot until chicken shreds easily.
Add Egg Noodles.
Season with Salt, Pepper, and Garlic to taste.
Once noodles are soft serve.

Conclusion:

This made more than even I expected this time. 40 cups frozen, 8 cups eaten, and I still have more to freeze. $22.50 spent. So roughly $0.47 cents per cup. Almost 33% of the price of off brand, and 59% cheaper than Campbells! I probably won’t need to make this again until next year.

~~Miniwing~~
Stoic, Investor, Parent, Wordsmith