Start by adding the chicken thighs (skin facing down)into a large saucepan with a tbsp of olive oil on a medium heat. It is preferable that you don’t use a non-stick pan for this recipe as the bits that get stuck on the pan provide a lot of flavour.
Fry until the skin is crispy (about 5 minutes) and then remove and set aside. This will flavour the oil and render some of the chicken fat out of the thighs (not aiming to cook them the whole way through here).
While the chicken is frying, prep the veg by slicing the onion, carrot, garlic and celery. Prep the thyme by removing from the stems and finely chopping half, reserving the other half for later.
Once you’ve removed the chicken thighs, add the all the chopped veg into the pan and gently fry for around 6 minutes.
After this, pour in 2.5 litres of chicken stock and reduce to a simmer. At this stage you can remove the crispy skin off the chicken thighs (should be easy as its cooked) and pop them back in the saucepan.
Place the remaining thyme on top so it isn’t too submerged and easy to remove afterwards. Simmer for 20 minutes.
Once the timers up, add the ‘noodles’/(spaghetti) into the pan and stir. Timer set to 10 minutes.
For the remaining minute of the timer you can blanche the chopped/ de-stemmed cavolo nero in the soup.