I nev­er got to meet my mater­nal grand­moth­er, but I feel a real teth­er to her in my kitchen. Dur­ing Passover, the Jew­ish hol­i­day when foods with any type of leav­en­ing are cus­tom­ar­i­ly avoid­ed, she used to make egg ​“noo­dles” out of just eggs. She would make a stack of incred­i­bly thin omelets, almost like egg crepes, roll the stack up like a huge cig­ar, and then cut them across into rib­bons. When we were in the ear­ly days of Grace’s type 1 dia­betes diag­no­sis a few years ago, eager for com­fort­ing dish­es that were low in car­bo­hy­drates, I imme­di­ate­ly thought about my mom’s sto­ries about how won­der­ful those egg noo­dles were. They’ve since become a favorite in our house. While we both love them in a sim­ple bowl of gold­en chick­en broth, they’re great in so many dif­fer­ent types of broth.

For a pho-inspired broth, you can char some onion, gar­lic, and gin­ger in a broil­er and then sim­mer them with stock and lots of cilantro stems, a whole star anise, and a cin­na­mon stick; then strain all of that after about an hour, and sea­son the broth with fish sauce. For a Mex­i­can-inspired broth, try sim­mer­ing your favorite dried chile pep­pers, gar­lic, and cilantro stems in stock. And on and on. What­ev­er broth you do, you can add some greens at the end of cook­ing and also poach some chick­en breasts or thighs in the broth for added heft, but I par­tic­u­lar­ly love the sim­plic­i­ty of broth and del­i­cate egg noo­dles. If you want to make this ahead, store the broth and egg noo­dles sep­a­rate­ly and then com­bine them just before serv­ing to best pre­serve their texture.

Gold­en Chick­en Broth with Real Egg Noodles

Serves 4

For the broth

9 cups [2 liters] water

1 large yel­low onion, rough­ly chopped (no need to peel)

1 pound [453 g] chick­en backs, bones, and/​or wings

First, make the broth

1 tea­spoon fresh­ly ground black pepper

kosher salt

For the egg noodles

4 large eggs

1⁄2 tea­spoon salt

Cook­ing spray

(my pref­er­ence is olive oil spray, but use what­ev­er you have)

Place the water, onion, chick­en parts, pep­per, and 1 table­spoon salt in a large pot over high heat. Don’t fear the large quan­ti­ty of salt (remem­ber you’re sea­son­ing all of that water).

Bring the mix­ture to a boil, skim off and dis­card any foam that ris­es to the top, and then turn the heat to low. Sim­mer the broth gen­tly so that it just bare­ly bub­bles and cook until the chick­en pieces total­ly fall apart and the broth is incred­i­bly fra­grant, about 2 hours. Ladle the broth through a fine-mesh sieve into a clean pot (or, if you don’t have anoth­er large pot, ladle it into a bowl, clean the pot you start­ed with, and return the broth to the pot). Dis­card the con­tents of the sieve (every­thing in it will have giv­en all it can by this point, but by all means feel free to pick the chick­en meat and snack on it; it won’t have much fla­vor, but there’s some­thing very sat­is­fy­ing about stand­ing next to a steam­ing pot and doing this).

Sea­son the broth to taste with addi­tion­al salt if need­ed. Keep the broth warm over low heat.

Reg­u­late the heat and spray the skil­let with cook­ing spray as need­ed in between omelets (you might not need to spray between each one depend­ing on the non­stick­ness of your skil­let). You will like­ly end up with 4 or 5 thin omelets (but it real­ly depends on the size of your pan).

Roll your stack of omelets togeth­er and then cut them cross­wise into thin ribbons.

Serve

Divide the noo­dles among 4 large bowls and ladle the broth over them. Serve immediately.

From the book SIM­PLY JULIA by Julia Tur­shen. Copy­right © 2021 by Julia Tur­shen. Pub­lished by Harp­er Wave, an imprint of Harper­Collins Pub­lish­ers. Reprint­ed by permission.