How to Make Chicken Soup (Recipes Kids Should Know Before Leaving Home)
Recently I shared my secrets for how to roast a chicken. A great follow-up recipe is Chicken Soup as it is a good way to use up leftover chicken. Plus who doesn’t love chicken soup? You’ll be able to keep your friends and family happy for years making them chicken soup! Like so many of the recipes that we’ve been working on as part of our Recipes Kids Should Know Before Leaving Home series, today’s chicken soup recipe is simple but also very flexible.
There are many ways to make chicken soup, from simmering leftover chicken bones to cooking chicken pieces bone-in and more. Instead we are giving you a base recipe for basic chicken soup that uses already-cooked chicken and chicken broth you can buy at the store. It’s easy, still homemade and tastes wonderful! Once you get this recipe down, you can start to experiment with other techniques as well as adding other ingredients, like herbs/spices, other types of vegetables or noodles or rice.
Today’s basic chicken soup recipe, however, is delicious on its own and will always be a great go-to recipe for a quick dinner.
How to Make Chicken Soup
PrintChicken Soup
This basic chicken soup recipe is delicious as is or as a base for experimenting with other types of chicken soup. If you want to add noodles or rice, add 1 cup of cooked rice or noodles to the recipe and increase the amount of chicken broth by 2 cups (8 cups total). All measurements in this recipe are flexible – feel free to adjust based on the amount of ingredients you have or to your preferences!
- Prep Time: 25 minutes
- Cook Time: 20 minutes
- Total Time: 45 minutes
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 1/4Â yellow onion, diced
- 1Â clove fresh garlic, minced or pushed through a garlic press
- 6 cups box-packaged chicken broth (or 6 teaspoons chicken bouillon + 6 cups boiling water)
- 1 cup cooked chicken, diced
- 1 cup carrots, peeled and cut into bite-sized pieces (about 2 medium carrots)
- 1/2Â frozen peas
- 1Â pinch salt & pepper, as needed
Instructions
- In a large pot, melt butter over medium heat (5 on a scale of 1-10).
- Add onion and saute a few minutes, until onions are soft and starting to look translucent. Stir the onions while they cook, although you do not need to be stirring the entire time, just every 30-60 seconds or so.
- Add garlic and cook for 1 minute, stirring.
- Add chicken broth to pot. Raise heat to high (around 9 on a scale of 1-10) and bring to a boil. Carefully add carrots to the pot then reduce heat to around medium (5), so that the water continues to simmer (smaller bubbles) but is not fully boiling. Cook for about 5 minutes.
- Add frozen peas and chicken to the pot. Simmer soup for about 5 more minutes. Carefully taste the soup and add a few pinches of salt and a few shakes of pepper to taste. Soup is done when chicken and peas are hot.
Find more Meals Kids Should Know How to Make Before They Leave Home here.
