Gordon Ramsay’s chicken noodle soup is aromatic, clean and deeply savoury, built on a broth of poached chicken thighs, dried shiitake mushrooms, ginger, star anise and Shaoxing rice wine, ready in about 25 minutes. The noodles hold their bite because they never touch the broth pot.
This is his Chicken and Shiitake Noodle Soup from Quick and Delicious, and it’s nothing like the Western-style versions every other recipe site puts his name on. Ramsay’s actual recipe is Asian-influenced. He writes: “I love the different broths and noodle soups you find across countries such as China, Japan, Malaysia and Vietnam. The broths are usually laboured over for many hours, but this soup uses dried shiitake mushrooms to shortcut the process.”
The technique that holds everything together is cooking the egg noodles in a separate pot, then rinsing them under cold water before serving. It sounds like an extra step you could skip, but it’s the difference between a clear, flavourful broth and a cloudy starch puddle where everything tastes the same.
Gordon Ramsay’s Chicken and Shiitake Noodle Soup
Course: Soup4
10
minutes15
minutes380
kcal25
minutesEasy
Gordon Ramsay’s Asian-style chicken noodle soup from Quick and Delicious. Chicken thighs poached with dried shiitake, ginger, star anise and Shaoxing wine, served over egg noodles cooked separately for a clear, clean broth. Serves 4 in about 25 minutes.
Ingredients
1.5 litres (6 cups) chicken stock
4 chicken thighs, skin on
12 dried shiitake mushrooms
2-3cm piece fresh root ginger, peeled and julienned
1 star anise
2 spring onions, trimmed and cut in half
100ml (scant ½ cup) Shaoxing rice wine
180g (6 oz) egg noodles
2 tbsp soy sauce
200g (7 oz) choi sum
Sea salt and ground white pepper
- To Serve:
80g (3 oz) bamboo shoots
Fresh coriander leaves or Asian microherbs
2 tsp sesame oil
Directions
- Build the broth: Place a saucepan over a high heat. Pour in the chicken stock, then add the chicken thighs and dried shiitake mushrooms. Add the ginger, star anise, spring onions and Shaoxing rice wine. Season with a big pinch of sea salt and a small pinch of white pepper.
- Simmer and skim: Bring to the boil, skimming off any impurities that rise to the surface. Once boiling, reduce the heat to a strong simmer and cook for 10 minutes.
- Cook noodles separately: Meanwhile, bring a kettle of water to the boil. Pour into a clean saucepan over a high heat and season with salt. Add the egg noodles and cook for 3 to 4 minutes until just tender. Drain and hold under running cold water until cool. Drain again and set aside.
- Shred the chicken: Remove a chicken thigh and check it is cooked through by piercing the thickest part with a sharp knife. The juices should run clear. Remove all the chicken and mushrooms from the broth and set aside. Discard the skin and bones, then shred the meat.
- Finish the broth: Using a slotted spoon, remove the star anise, ginger and spring onions from the broth. Return it to a high heat, add the soy sauce and taste for seasoning.
- Add the greens: Roughly chop the choi sum into 7cm lengths, separating the stalks from the leafy parts. Add the stalks to the broth and cook for 2 minutes. Add the leaves and turn the heat off.
- Assemble and serve: Divide the noodles between four bowls. Top with the shiitake mushrooms, shredded chicken and choi sum, then ladle over the broth. Garnish with bamboo shoots, fresh coriander and a drizzle of sesame oil.
FAQs
Why does Ramsay cook the noodles in a separate pot?
Starch. Noodles boiled in the broth release starch that clouds the liquid and turns everything gluey. Ramsay avoids this in every noodle recipe he publishes.
He cooks them for 3 to 4 minutes in salted water, drains them, then rinses under cold running water to wash off the surface starch. Noodles go into bowls first, hot broth poured over. They warm through in seconds but keep their chew.
What do dried shiitake mushrooms actually do to the broth?
They contain a compound called guanylate that amplifies the glutamate already in chicken stock. The umami you taste is far greater than either ingredient alone, which is why 12 small dried mushrooms transform 1.5 litres of stock into something that tastes like it simmered for hours.
Ramsay puts them straight into the cold stock with the chicken so they rehydrate as the broth heats. By the time it boils, they’ve done their work. He serves them whole on top as a garnish.
Why chicken thighs with the skin on instead of breast?
Two jobs at once. The fat keeps the meat moist during the poach, and the skin releases collagen into the broth that dissolves as gelatin, giving it a silky body plain stock doesn’t have.
After 10 minutes he pulls them out, discards the skin and bones, shreds the meat. The skin has already done its work in the pot. If you have leftover thighs, Ramsay uses the same cut in his chicken curry for the same reason: more flavour than breast.
Can you make the broth ahead and reheat it later?
Yes, and Ramsay says it gets better. In his MasterClass he describes chilling the broth, refrigerating it, then bringing it back to a boil three or four days later. He calls the aromatics “breathtaking” after steeping.
Store broth without noodles or chicken. It keeps five days in the fridge or six months frozen. Reheat, cook fresh noodles in a separate pot, assemble per bowl. That’s what makes this brilliant for meal prep.
Can you make this with regular Western ingredients instead?
You could swap ginger for celery, drop the star anise and Shaoxing wine, and use parsley instead of coriander. But you’d be making a different soup, and not one Ramsay has ever published. Every version he’s put in a cookbook is Asian-style.
Try this one first, because the shiitake broth genuinely tastes better than anything from a stock cube and dried herbs. If you like the Asian noodle approach, his teriyaki salmon with soba noodles is another quick weeknight meal in the same vein.
