Traditional Romanian chicken noodle soup

Preparing the chicken broth – 2 hours

If you use fresh chicken, as we did, you have to clean it with cold water. Ours was really fresh, so we needed to boil it in water for a few minutes and then throw out the water and fill the large pan with new water.

Bring the new water with the whole chicken, lavas and parsley to a boil. When it starts to boil you turn down the heat and let it simmer as long as possible, but at least an hour.

The longer it will simmer, the more flavour the broth will have. Meanwhile, prepare the veggies. Peel the onion, carrot and celery root. Chop the onion as fine as you can and chop the carrot and celery into cubes.

Remove the seeds from the red pepper and chop into cubes 

Finishing the traditional Romanian chicken noodle soup – 15 minutes

Heat oil in the second large pan and sauté the chopped onion for about 1 to 2 minutes. Add the cubes of pepper, carrot and celery and sauté it a few minutes more on medium heat.

Pour the tomatoes from the can into the pan and sauté it for a few minutes more. Then place the colander on top of the pan and pour the chicken broth into it. This way you can get the beautiful broth straight in the right pan without the chicken bones.

Let the soup simmer some more until the veggies are almost soft enough. Break the noodles into pieces, or else they'll be too hard to eat. Add the noodles to the soup.

Pluck the meat from the chicken bones into small pieces and also add them to the soup. Season the soup with the juice of 1 lemon, pepper and salt.

In Romania, they like this soup to be quite sour, but you can use as much lemon juice as your taste prefers. Garnish with parsley and enjoy!