Not really a recipe....but more of a method.
Start with your broth. I will assume you haven't been stock piling pieces of chickens....so the easy way will be to buy a bag of wings. They don't have to be "drumettes" just whole chicken wings.
Put 5 pounds of wings into a pot with a lid and add one yellow onion cut into quarters, 3 sticks of celery cut in half, 2 carrots cut in half, 1 small sweet potato cut in half, with the skin left on, 3 bay leaves, a small bunch of fresh parsley, 3 whole peeled cloves of garlic and half a lemon, sliced with the seeds removed.
Simmer slowly for about 3 hours....or up to 5 hours. add more water if it boils away.
Pour the whole mess through a colonder, into another pot.....don't forget the other pot....you want the broth not the stuff in the colonder!!
Pick as much meat as you can out of the mess in the colonder, and throw the rest away.
Add meat to the broth. Then I refrigerate until cool and any grease rises to the top. skim the grease, return to the pot and add veggies, about 4 cups. 2 cups chopped onion, 2 1/2 cups sliced celery, 1 1/2 cups carrot buttons. Simmer until carrots are cooked, about 40 minutes, taste and add salt and pepper....probably will take 4 to 5 teaspoons of salt, depending on how salty you like it, and at least a teaspoon of fresh ground black pepper.
Add noodles if you like or rice....or neither.
Linda C

I have no recipe in particular to share, but I would add that the saying should be "easy as chicken soup" rather than "easy as pie!" I find chicken soup to be almost foolproof and pie is a pain in the patootie! My secret is to add a pinch (and a very small pinch at that) of saffron to the broth. I also add a bit of thyme. I would also add that getting a jar of "Better than Bouillon" soup base might be a good thing. I don't use it straight for my broths, but it is helpful for adding just a bit to what I'm making if it needs a little extra oomph. Watch out though, that stuff is salty!

Left over roast chicken. Boil it for a few hours. Drain the broth into a bowl. Separate the chicken from bones and add it to broth. Refrigerate at least over night. Skim the grease. I add celery, carrots, onions, garlic, parsley and S&P sometimes tomatoes and water. When the veggies are almost done I add barley usually or rice/noodles. Juice of a l/2 lemon and thyme.

I would do as follows.
- Buy 2 or 3 whole chickens. Remove breasts and legs. Hack the remaining carcasses up into biggish hunks. Place the hunks, skin and all, on a sheet pan. Debone the legs, break the bones open, add those bones to the sheet pan. Don't forget the giblets. Roast the pan of carcass and bones at 400F for 1 hour, until browned.
- Place roasted bones in a large stock pot. If you don't have a large enough pot, use the two largest pots you have. Add a few stocks of celery, a few carrots, a medium onion, some peppercorns, a splash of vinegar, and as much water as will fit. You want to start out with 1.5X to 2X more water than the amount of soup you want to make. Keep at a high boil, uncovered, until the stock reduces to the desired amount. This will take 2+ hours.
- Remove all the solids in the pot, press the liquid out of them into another pot, and throw away all the pressed-out solids. Don't re-use them, they should be tasteless mush. Indeed, you want them to be tasteless mush, that means their taste went into the stock.
- Drain the stock through a colander, lined with cheesecloth if you have it, into another pot. Don't forget the other pot. Don't be the person who pours their precious stock down the drain. Like I've done.
- Defat the stock, either using a fat separator or by refrigerating and removing the fat cap.
- If you have more stock than you need (hopefully you will), you can freeze the excess.
- Now make the soup. Bring stock to boil.
- Meanwhile, rough dice the chicken breasts and deboned legs, and optionally brown it in a pan, but that's not necessary. Dice all the veggies mentioned in previous posts. Other non-traditional stuff I sometimes add is bell peppers, small diced red potato, green onions. I like Herbes de Provence but that's not really traditional. Put chicken and veggies in the stock, low boil or simmer until the carrots are just soft, probably as little as 15-20 minutes. Everything else will be done by the time the carrots are tender. Though, if you are adding rice or barley or couscous, you might have to add those first. Don't forget salt and pepper, and don't be shy with it - in a large pot of soup you can use quite a fair bit of salt, each bowl will have only a small about of sodium.
- This process is a bit long, but the actual time spent tending the pot is minimal. The reason to do it is you get a tasty, long-boiled, and concentrated stock, while the meat and veggies that you actually end up eating haven't had the life cooked out of them.

I guarantee you will have the most amazing full flavored and intensely chicken-y stock you have ever had to make your soup:

1. Buy a few turkey necks.

2. Go to a Chinese store and buy a special soup making chicken. You will have to ask the store clerk, it is a true free-range old chicken. Yes, very old chicken, raised for making soup. Supermarket chickens are too young to have much flavor.

Use a pressure cooker, if you have a PC, to cook the turkey necks and the chicken, and you will end up unbelievable chicken stock.

dcarch

If you would like an actual recipe, Check out Anne Burrell's on the Food Network website. I've made it just for something different and it has a very nice flavor to it.

I never make the same chicken soup twice.

To make life simple, buy a rotisserie bird, remove the meat and simmer the bones and skin for an hour or two with whatever you want. I usually use the basics, an onion, celery, pepper corns, bay leaf, maybe some rosemary, white wine, water, juice of a lemon. Yellow onion skins will give the broth a lovely golden color. Strain, cool, skim the fat.

My soup is usually simple: carrots, celery, chicken, noodles.

What they said - I like to start with a chicken I roasted or a rotisserie chicken from Costco. Remove the meat, put in the crockpot with some aromatics like onion and celery for truly set-it-and-forget-it.

In the morning, strain the broth or remove all the carcass and used-up veggies with tongs. Put the broth in a pot and add the stuff you like as well as the meat you removed the previous day - shredded. I like potato or rice or noodles, carrot, some spices such as thyme and oregano, salt and pepper. I sometimes like to add some cilantro and chopped avocado to the bowl after serving, or you can serve bowls of chopped cilantro and avocado at the table if you are a fan of those. Oh, and a lime wedge!

If you like bready dumplings you can follow the old dumpling recipe on the Bisquick package - that was my childhood favorite.