When I was a kid, my family occasionally had chicken and noodles or beef and noodles and would eat them over mashed potatoes. This isn’t something I would still do just because I don’t find that much carbohydrate to be too good, but it doesn’t strike me as weird. My coworkers from this area also find it a normal idea.
But my SIL, from West Virginia, thinks it’s bizarre. She found out my brother’s favorite dish is beef and noodles over mashed potatoes and she thought he was a giant freak. (He might be, but I think the evidence lies elsewhere!)
So, whether or not you find it appealing, do you think the idea of chicken noodle over mashed potatoes is weird?
One of my mom’s favorite things to make and eat is chicken and noodles over mashed potatoes with corn! Talk about a starch overload. FWIW, she’s from Southern Indiana.
I don’t think it’s ‘weird’. I could see a harried mom of 8 slopping it over mashed potatoes to fill up all those stomaches. But I wouldn’t go out of my way to make it for a ‘normal’ dinner. It’s too much of a muddle, more than one starch.
A bit odd to me, but not bizarre. I wouldn’t do it because noodles and potatoes just seem redundant. Just chicken and potatoes or beef and potatoes would be fine. Then again, my favorite pierogi are the potato ones, so I can’t complain too much about combining two starches in one dish.
Take some chicken (thighs, breasts, whatever) throw it in a crockpot with celery, carrots and onions (all cut up), cover with a 50/50 of water and broth (I find this gives it a lot of flavor, without going crazy on the sodium) though some people go all broth. Add pepper. cook for hours and hours, until the chicken meat falls off the bones. Remove the bones and discard. Cut up chicken into smaller pieces if it didn’t fall apart as small as you would like.
Transfer some of the broth to a sauce pan, bring to a boil, add noodles (I use homemade - insanely easy, no pasta maker involved) and cook until tender, add back to crock and voila.
Then just serve with mashed taters and peas. (or corn or green beans.)
Its like chicken noodle soup (obviously less “soupy” and more of a gravy/stew texture) over mashed potatoes.
For our major holiday dinners, the women in my family would always get out of bed early to begin preparing homemade noodles for the feast, which, since we were country folk, would usually happen around noon.
And yes, we served the noodles on top of potatoes. Even as a child, I thought this was a little weird, but tasty enough.
Cut to 1998. I began seeing a girl from Newark, Ohio and on one of my visits to her family, we decided to eat at Miller’s Essenplatz, a large complex with an Amish theme and a gift shop selling the locally made Longaberger baskets.
Turns out, this restaurant’s specialty is beef/chicken and noodles served over mashed potatoes, served up with plenty of bread and a choice of side dish. Want fries with that? No problem!
Through the years, I have discovered that we weren’t the only ones eating this bland yet hearty combination.
Yeah - nobody makes chicken and noodles like the Amish! My husband grew up with this dish, but I did not, so my first exposure to it was at an Amish restaurant.
