I usually am such a cheater when it comes to any soup that involves chicken. I'll just thaw some boneless skinless breasts from my freezer, buy a couple cans of chicken broth, and just call it a day. Not with this soup!

Everything is 100% from scratch, using a complete chicken, fresh herbs, everything. I went so far as to build the chicken stock base with vegetables, the chicken, and herbs (each cooked in their own hand made cheesecloth sacks), let it boil until the chicken is falling off the bones- then remove everything, filter the broth through two layer of cheese cloth, freeze the broth to remove the layer of fat that forms to make it as close to fat-free as possible... THEN, re-heated the broth, picked all the worthwhile meat off the bones, threw that back in the broth, chopped up all new vegetables, cooked those in the broth... and a bunch of other stuff I am sure I'm forgetting.