Hoosiers Love Carbs

Homemade egg noodles

Some days are just noodle days. We, that is, I, made a broth from the bones of two rotisserie chickens from our dinner on Friday night.

I had planned to use cheater noodles, but quickly changed my mind when I realized I had a few minutes to make up noodle dough.

One, two, three, splat on the flour.

I put in 1 egg for every 1/2 cup of flour. For our family, I use 4 eggs and 2 cups of flour, then I sprinkle in salt. I don't know how much I put in, just a sprinkling and a half.

Egg noodle dough

Put it all in the mixer with the dough hook until it is smooth. It can be mixed by hand, too, just use lots of flour for kneading. I also threw in a tablespoon or two of water, though that's not absolutely necessary.

Not worried about perfect strips

Then roll it out on the counter, with flour to keep it from sticking, until it is very thin. Cut strips with a pizza cutter. You can also roll up the dough into a log, then cut it with a knife, but I don't find that's any faster. It just makes unrolling those boogers a pain in the hiney.

Also, since these are noodles we're eating, not being judged on at the 4-H Fair, I really don't care if they're all uniform. Just cut them.

Boiling the noodles

Then I drop them one by one in the boiling broth. I did cut these down when they were in the pot, though it would have been easier to do that before the pot stage. I just wasn't thinking of it at the time.

It's important that the broth or water is boiling. I once put these noodles into a crock pot. The end result was a mush of nothing because the noodles just melted in the slow heat. Pain is an effective teacher.

Boiling hardens the noodles quickly enough that they keep their shape. This only applies to fresh noodles. Dried varieties are okay in the crock pot.

True to Indiana form, I made mashed (or smashed) potatoes to go with the chicken and noodles.

My mom never made up meals with so many starches all at once, but I guess it really is a Hoosier tradition, which I found out when I met my mother-in-law. Load up a chicken noodle meal with enough carbs to last a week: noodles, smashed potatoes with gravy, bread or rolls, corn-on-the-cob or corn casserole, and sugar cream pie. That's a Hoosier meal.

By the way, sugar cream pie is the state pie for Indiana. Bit of trivia for anyone cares about it.

Just throw in green bean casserole and a turkey to make it a Thanksgiving dinner.

Anyway, I love as a mom seeing my children slurp down the food I make, which they did with these noodles. Mmm...

We, that is, I, will be making lots more of these as the weather grows colder.