The BEST homemade chicken noodle soup! This version is made from scratch, so it's light and nourishing. All the goodness from the chicken in one pot of soup. Just what you need to recover from a cold or the flu.
Remove the raw breast meat from the breast bones, and the thigh meat from the thigh bone, place in a bowl, cover and chill in the refrigerator until needed towards the end of preparing the soup. Remove and discard the largest pieces of breast and thigh skin. Cut away and discard excess fat from chicken pieces.
Place breast and thigh bones, the back, legs, neck, and wings in a large (8 quart) pot. Cover with water. Bring to a full rolling boil. Boil for 3 minutes. After 3 minutes, remove from heat, drain off the water, rinse the bones and the pot.
Return the now parboiled bones to the clean pot. Add the carrots and celery ribs, and some celery tops if you have them, to the pot with the chicken. (Fennel tops or leek greens can be added too, if you have them.) Add the quartered onion, garlic cloves, thyme, one-half of the parsley, and the peppercorns to the pot. Cover with an inch or two of water (about 3 quarts). Bring to a low simmer (about 185°F) and let simmer (the stock should be just barely bubbling), partially covered, for 1 1/2 hours.
At the end of 1 1/2 hours strain out the bones and vegetables, reserving the stock. Rinse out the pot and return the stock to the pot.
Taste the stock. It should be rather bland because up to now, no salt has been added. Add salt to taste. As a guideline, for each quart of stock, add 2 teaspoons of salt.
Cut the chicken breast and thigh meat into bite-sized pieces. Add to the pot with the carrots, celery, and stock. Return to a low simmer.
Add the egg noodles and return to a simmer. Simmer for until the egg noodles are just barely cooked through, al dente (about 5 minutes or so, depending on your package of noodles), and the chicken is just cooked through. Note that the noodles will expand substantially in the soup broth as they cook.
Stir in a handful of chopped fresh parsley. Add freshly ground black pepper, more thyme, and more salt to taste.