Chicken Noodle Soup

Melt the butter in a large heavy pan over medium-low heat.

Cook the onion, carrots and celery for 8-10 minutes, stirring now and then, until they have softened without taking any colour. Colour here would muddy a broth that is meant to stay pale and clear.

Pour in the stock and add the bay leaves and thyme.

Bring to a gentle simmer and cook for 10 minutes, until a knife tip goes through a carrot coin with no resistance.

Slide the chicken thighs in and push them under the surface.

Poach at a bare simmer for 12-15 minutes, where a bubble breaks somewhere every second or two.

Never let it boil with the chicken in it. A hard boil squeezes the thighs into dry strings, and it churns fat and protein into the liquid so the broth turns cloudy — which, unlike almost everything else in this recipe, cannot be undone.

Check the thickest thigh with a thermometer if you have one: 74C/165F. Without one, cut into the thickest part and look for meat that is opaque right through with the juices running clear.

Lift the thighs onto a board and rest them for 5 minutes.

Bring the 1.5 litres of water to the boil in a separate pan and stir in the 8g of fine salt.

Cook the noodles for a minute less than the packet says, until they are just tender.

Cook them in their own water and never in the broth. They shed enough starch to turn a clear soup cloudy and faintly gluey, and noodles left standing in stock keep drinking — a pan put away tonight is a pan of swollen noodles with no broth around them tomorrow.

Drain the noodles well.

Shred the rested chicken with two forks, pulling it along the grain into pieces that will sit on a spoon.

Return the chicken to the broth and warm it through for a minute off the boil.

Fish out the bay leaves and the thyme stalks.

Season with the ground peppercorns, then with fine salt, tasting as you go — how much depends entirely on whether the stock was seasoned at all.

Stir in the lemon juice off the heat. It is a small amount and it does more for a pale broth than any further salt would.

Divide the noodles between four warm bowls.

Ladle the broth and chicken over them.

Scatter the dill over.

Keep the broth and the noodles in separate containers if any is left.

Cool the broth in a shallow container rather than the pan, refrigerate within two hours and eat it within three days.

Reheat the broth to a full simmer and pour it over the cold noodles, which is enough to warm them through.