Spicy Sesame Ginger Chicken Noodle Soup

Course dinner

Keyword Birdseye Pepper, Peri-Peri Pepper, Thai Pepper

Prep Time 10

Cook Time 50

Total Time 1

Servings servings

Calories 863kcal

Ingredients

8 fresh red bird’s eye chilies finely chopped, seeds and all. The ones I used were each about 2 inches long and 1/3-inch thick.
2 ½ pounds bone-in, skin-on free-range chicken thighs that weight gave me eight thighs – just grand for a rule of thumb that allows for 2 thighs per person
3 tablespoons toasted sesame oil plus 1 tablespoon as a garnishing condiment
3 ½ ounces fresh whole skin-on ginger root sliced into rounds about 1/8-inch thick, skin and all
6 cloves garlic peeled and thinly sliced
3 scallions or spring onions, medium-sized. Stems removed. Keep as much of the crisply fresh green parts as you can, and then slice the scallions (both white and green parts) into long strands about 1/8-inch wide.
1 cup Shaoxing rice wine
1 heaped tablespoon palm sugar I used the type of hard palm sugar that comes in domes about 2 inches across, and reckon that one of those is equal to a heaped tablespoon.
1 cube chicken stock
6 cups water
2 heaped teaspoons ground sea salt
5 ounces dried vermicelli rice noodles

US Customary - Metric

Instructions

Cooking the sesame and ginger soup

Heat 3 tablespoons toasted sesame oil in a big skillet set on a medium-high heat. I used a heavy-based, 12-inch skillet that was big enough to hold all the chicken thighs in a single layer.
Let the oil heat until its surface starts to shimmer, then add the chicken thighs skin side up. Take a little care so as not to heat the oil so much that it begins smoking. That’s just way too much heat for toasted sesame oil and for the chicken.
Drop the heat to low-medium, and let the thighs sizzle away, skin side up, for 4 minutes.
You want to get a pale golden color on the underside of the thighs. Once that happens, carefully turn the thighs over and let them fry skin side down for another 4 minutes on that low-medium heat. You want the skin to stay on the thighs, so don’t move them about in the skillet. Just let them sizzle gently and stay whole.
As the thighs fry, you’ll probably find the oil foams a lot. That’s perfect because it shows the oil is not too hot. You’ll also see that a fair amount of thighs’ fat has melted out into the sesame oil. That’s exactly what you want.
Once you’ve got that pale golden color on both sides of the thighs, remove them with a slotted spoon and set them aside on a big dinner plate. Try and leave as much of the fatted oil as you can in the skillet as that’s where the ginger, garlic, and chilies are heading now for some hot-and-fast frying.
Turn the skillet’s heat back to medium-high and let the oil come back up to that shimmer point. Now stir in the sliced ginger. You want to stir-fry the ginger on that medium-high heat for about 2 minutes, just until it picks up a little golden color. Now add the chilies and the garlic and keep stir frying the lot for another 2 minutes.Then remove your skillet from the heat. Good. That’s all the frying done. Time now for some broth-based poaching.
Set a big saucepan, easily big enough to hold all your soup’s ingredients except the noodles, on a high heat and add everything from your skillet (the ginger, garlic, chilies, and all the oil.)
Quick as you can, stir in the water, Shaoxing rice wine, palm sugar, chicken stock cube, and salt. Give the pan a few good stirs as it comes up to a boil. You want to stir enough so that the palm sugar and stock cube get dissolved into your broth.
As soon as the pan starts boiling, drop the heat to low. Now add the chicken thighs skin side up in a single layer, together with all the juices from their plate. Cover the pan and let it simmer gently for 35 minutes so that the thighs cook right through as they poach in the broth. Nearly done.
Remove the chicken with a slotted spoon and turn off the pan. Let the chicken cool enough so you can handle it. Once that happens, pull the skin off the thighs, chop it finely, and return it all to your broth. Now use your fingers to carefully pull all the meat off the thighs’ bones.
Try not to shred the meat, but rather pull it away in chunky pieces. Add all the meat the meat to your broth and turn the heat to high until the pan just starts bubbling. Right now, I like to check the broth for saltiness. Adjust according to your taste.
Give the pan a gentle stir, drop the heat to low, and cover the pan. It’s done. You just need to keep the soup on that low heat so that it stays nicely hot for serving while you sort out the noodles.

Cooking the rice noodles

This is really quick and easy. Just follow the pack’s instructions. That usually means you set the noodles in a medium size pan and completely cover them with boiling water. Let them sit in the water for two minutes with a few stirs to separate them. They’re ready.

Serving your sesame and ginger chicken noodle soup

Big, warmed soup bowls are the way to go here. Divide the noodles between the bowls.
Now ladle the soup over the top of the noodles so that each bowl gets its fair share of chicken. I like to first fill each bowl about half full of the gingery garlic broth, then add the chicken so that it sits closer to the top of the bowl.
Now lay some strands of the scallions on top of each bowl. You're ready to serve.

Notes

Set some sesame oil on the table, so folks can pour a little over their scallion-topped bowls. I reckon a couple of teaspoons per person is about right. You can either present the sesame oil in a little bowl, or like me, just offer it straight from the rather attractive bottle it came in.

Nutrition