OAMC:Once A Month Cooking-Chicken & Noodles
February 26, 2008 by Marye Audet
Filed under Main Course, Make ahead, Quick and Easy
When I was growing up in Eastern Pennsylvania we always called this chicken pot pie. Later, after moving south, I was informed that it is chicken and noodles. Ah well, whatever. It is chicken, it is pasta, it is comfort food, and it is wonderful. Best of all you can use it for your once a month cooking.
Really, does it get better than that without chocolate in it? I don’t think so. The creamy sauce, tender chicken, and savory vegetables make this perfect for a blustery day. Add a salad, bran muffins, and maybe apple pie .
You can vary the vegetables according to what you have on hand. Mushrooms, peas, celery, carrots, and even spinach works well here. Again, while I prefer a homemade cream sauce, for freezing the canned soups just work better for me.
This is also my entry for Presto Pasta Night. A little early, but I seem to be better at being early than on time. 
Chicken & Noodles
1 lb farafelle, cooked al dente
1 lb chicken, more if you like.
2 onions, chopped
2 stalks of celery, chopped
2 carrots, sliced
1 cup of frozen peas
1/2 c mushrooms, sliced
2 bay leaves
2 cloves garlic
2 cans of cream of chicken soup, or one can of cream of chicken and one can of cream of mushroom
1/2 c buttermilk (full fat is best)
Put chicken in a pot with water to cover. Add the vegetables, bay leaves, and garlic, and simmer until chicken and vegetables are tender. Allow to cool. Remove bay leaf.
Remove chicken from bone (if using whole chicken) or chop boneless chicken in bite sized pieces. Add with vegetables to farafelle (bow tie pasta). Mix well. Add soups, buttermilk, and enough of the cooking water to get a thick sauce. Check for seasoning.
You can cover and freeze at this point.
To serve: Thaw overnight in the refrigerator. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes, or until bubbly and heated through.
Everything on this page (c) 2008 Marye Audet for Baking Delights, http://bakingdelights.com. Any other use is stealing.
I got nothing but YUM on this one. Great recipe!
mmmm, this sounds so delicious… Hooray for comfort food! It’s especially nice in the chill of February…
Thank you so much for the visit and the comment on my blog! I’m so glad you led me, in turn, to your incredible blog… I especially enjoyed reading about you and your family – your experiences felt very familiar, since I grew up homeschooled on a sheep farm, with a few horses in the pasture too…
I love how well you capture the magic of family in the kitchen. That’s what life is all about!
Jen- thanks! I used ot make it with homemade egg noodles which would be more traditional but Kyrie likes bows…she is such a girlie girl. So bows it is and I am thankful she doesn’t know about pink pasta.
Astra- thank you for visiting! What type of sheep did you have? We had Jacobs for awhile to feed my spinning habit but then I realized it was just easier to buy the silver on ebay.
Have you had chicken and dumplings, yet? My grandmother made them so good…
My husband is a Yankee (like you, ha!), but he can make them nearly as good as grandma. Well, nearly as good as grandma, but not as good as me.
I have had chicken and dumplings but I like pot pie, or noodles better.
Chicken and dumplings are also great.
yep they are.
I grew up in the Philly metro area and Mom made potpie all the time. There were no noodles in it at all – it was a rolled out dough, very much like pie dough, that was cut into strips and cooked in chicken broth. No vegies, no potatoes, just the seasoned stock made when cooking the chicken. I found the same thing in Tennessee and in Savannah, but they called it chicken and (rolled) dumplings. Cracker Barrel also has “dumplin’s” that are very much like what I grew up with. We’d go to Lancaster County all the time to eat at Amish restaurants and theirs was just like Mom’s. Yours looks very good, but I’d never call it potpie. Got me hungry for some, though. I’ve been wanting to make it for a while. Guess I’d better.
Wendy- funny! Everyone I knew called this a pot pie.Whatever..it sure is good!
It sure does look good, that’s for sure. That’s OK – a former roomie of mine from Cincinnati used to call bell peppers ‘mangos’. Still don’t know where they got that since mangos are something else entirely. Different names, different places. Hoagies, subs, grinders, tomato, tomahto. Right?? LOL