Turkey Corn Noodle Soup
Ingredients
for the soup:
- 1 onion diced
- 2 carrots, cut into coins
- 2 stalks celery (with greens), sliced
- 1 tablespoon poultry seasoning
- salt
- freshly ground black pepper
- 2 bay leaves
- 4 cup cubed cooked turkey
- 2 1/2 quarts turkey stock
- 1 bunch Italian parsley coarsely chopped
for the noodles:
- 3 eggs
- 2 cups flour
- salt
- freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
for the soup:
- In a large pot, saute the onion, carrots and celery until the onion is translucent and the vegetables have softened. Stir in the turkey and saute 1 minute. Add the stock and the spices and bring to a boil.
for the noodles:
- In a medium bowl using a spoon of you are strong or the bowl of a standmixer, mix together the noodle ingredients until a uniform dough forms.
- Pinch off small bits of the dough into the boiling soup. Reduce heat and continue to cook for 15-20 minutes or until the dumplings are cooked through and a little fluffy. They float before they are fully cooked so that is not a good indicator. Fish one out and try it before serving. Remove the bay leaves and discard.Stir in the parsley until it wilts and serve hot.
Notes
I was recently in York, PA overnight to take a class a short distance away at fiber arts center. York is not a huge place and my hotel was a little outside the “city” area so I ended up doing a fair amount of driving around and kept seeing signs–light up signs, photo signs, lettered signs–for chicken corn noodle soup. Many of the signs heralded it’s triumphant return to the menu.
I had heard of the soup–also referred to as “Amish” or “Pennsylvania Dutch” Chicken Corn Noodle before and I actually think I had it years ago but I didn’t realize it was such a thing. It seemed like every gas station, sandwich shop or deli had it on the menu. It’s not often you see soup advertised on a roadside sign so I knew I had to make it.
Since it is time for my favorite part of the autumn and winter holidays–leftover season–I decided to make it with turkey instead of chicken. Due to the turkey not defrosting in time for our near-annual fake Thanksgiving, I had a lot of turkey to deal with. I used some of it in this hot turkey salad recipe for my community cookbook website, my husband made stock with the carcass and then I made this soup. Well, he also made the noodles because they required more arm strength than I had. A joint effort.
The noodles are called rivels and there is some debate about using milk in them and rolling them out vs having them be simply just egg and flour and dropping them in dumpling style or a hybrid of the two methods. When I looked them up online I saw some dropping large spoonfuls into the soup but the ones I saw were very small. I’m not going to get into the weeds about it but I went with no milk and dropped pinches of them into the soup. It was easier and I thought it fit such a simple soup to go with a less fussy method. It takes slightly longer than using packaged noodles but they came together quickly.
The soup was your classic turkey soup and the noodles (really dumplings if you ask me) were fun. They do take a full 15 minutes to cook–more if they are a little large–so don’t skimp on that. If you stop cooking them too soon they are hard and raw tasting but when they finished they are surprisingly light and fluffy.
I do not think this soup would hold up well as leftovers if my experience with other dumpling/noodle soups is any indication so I would either plan to eat it all the day you make it or boil the noodles in water or stock separately and add them to each bowl. Then store them dry separate from the soup leftovers in the refrigerator.
