Egg Noodles In Chicken Broth

Photo: flickr user avlxyz

Ingredients

3 cups all purpose flour

4 eggs, with ½ egg shell of water

2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon baking powder, this is optional

Preparation

In order to make enough noodles for say, ten people, I cook one cut up stewing hen very slowly in about 3 quarts of water, some salt and pepper. When the chicken is done, not falling off the bone, I remove the chicken from the broth and while it is cooling I make egg noodles to put into the broth. If your hen is very fat let the broth cool and remove about 2/3 of the fat and discard. For myself I always remove a lot of the fat because I think it is better for ones health to cut down on fats.

Put your flour in a medium bowl and add all the other ingredients and mix from the center until the dough can be pressed together with floury hands. Do not overmix or the dough will get tough. Turn out on a floured table and roll gently at first into a circle. The rolling gets pretty hard before you are done. You should end up with a circle about as large as you can reach around.

Smear a bit of flour over your circle of dough and let it rest for an hour or two if you can. This dries the dough a bit and makes it easier to cut your noodles.

After the dough has dried roll it up lightly as you would a jelly roll. Put it on your cutting board and slice your noodles the width you like them and drop them into the boiling broth. let them boil pretty lively until all the noodles are cooking and then turn the heat down and let them simmer uncovered for about 20 minutes. If you like very tender noodles, as I do. Cover and simmer another half and hour. Be sure to keep stirring occasionally.