Ever since I could remember, I looked forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve every year for one food item, homemade noodles. My mom and her family take turns on who makes the noodles. I remember as a kid helping my mom knead and roll out the dough, which I would give up halfway and have my mom finish because of me having little to no muscles as a kid. My mom learned the recipe from her granny who would never measure the ingredients, especially with the butter. Granny would just take her hand and get a handful of butter, so my mom had to figure out how to perfect the recipe with measuring cups.

What you’ll need:

• 5 heaping cups of flour
• 2 sticks of butter
• 6 eggs
• ¼ cup of water
• 1 ham bone
• ½ large mason jar of ham fat/juice
• 2 boxes of chicken broth
• 3 cups of water

Instructions:

1. In a medium to large-sized pot, pour 2 boxes of chicken broth, 3 cups of water, ½ of a large mason jar of ham fat/juice and 1 ham bone into the pot
2. Put the broth, water, ham fat/juice and ham bone mixture on medium and allow it to start boiling
3. Take a large bowl and pour in 5 heaping cups of flour
4. Put 2 sticks of butter in the microwave for 30 seconds or until soft.
5. Create a hole in the middle of the flour and put the butter and 6 eggs in the hole
6. Using your hands, knead the butter and eggs together to form a dough; if the dough is crumbly, add ¼ cup of water and knead the dough together until it forms a ball
7. Section the dough into four balls
8. Sprinkle flour onto the surface and the rolling pin and the dough ball
9. With each ball, use a rolling pin, or a glass cup if you don’t have access to a rolling pin. Roll each ball in different directions until the dough is however thin or thick you want.
10. Use a pizza cutter to cut flattened dough into strips. The strips can be as thick or thin as you like, but the thinner the strips are, the quicker they will cook
11. In between cutting strips, use a baking pan with sprinkled flour on parchment paper and add strips on. Try to keep the strips flat and sprinkle flour on top to keep them from sticking.
12. After cutting strips of dough, the broth should be boiling by now, so slowly add the strips of dough into the broth
13. After adding the dough, immediately stir the dough around a little, then bring the heat down a little and stir the dough every 10-15 minutes
14. Around 2 hours after stirring the dough every 10-15 minutes, taste test a noodle carefully because it will be extremely hot.
15. When the noodles are done cooking, move the noodles to a crockpot or another pot, straining the noodles from the broth.