This thick, hearty chicken soup is stuffed with healthy vegetables and flecked with fresh green herbs.
Chicken soup can be a great clean-out-the-fridge meal, perfect for using up whatever vegetables, grains, or other leftovers you might have hanging around. This one happily accepts vegetables of all kinds – corn, mushrooms, tomatoes, green beans, peppers, any kind of leafy greens, chunks of summer or winter squash or potatoes. Pretty much anything except the broccoli family including cauliflower and Brussels sprouts, which don’t play well with others in soup.
The soup doesn’t suffer from the addition of cooked grains such as rice, or barley, or even leftover (plain/un-sauced) pasta. If you want to add dry pasta and cook it in the soup, add a couple of extra cups of chicken broth so the soup doesn’t get too thick. You could even substitute crumbled or sliced sausage, cubes of ham or mini meatballs for the chicken. Add cooked kidney beans or chickpeas if you like.
You get the idea: this chicken soup is more of a formula than a recipe. A foundation of aromatics – onions, carrots and celery are essential, leek and garlic optional – should always be your starting point no matter which direction you’re heading. After that, the possibilities are endless.
Prep tips, making this ahead, and what to do with leftovers:
- The first and most important prep-ahead step is to make your own chicken broth*, if feasible. Do this the day before, chill the broth overnight, skim the fat from the top, and use the chicken fat to sauté the vegetables.
- Other prep-ahead steps include shredding the chicken and chopping/slicing all of the vegetables. Segregate the prepped vegetables into prep bowls based on what gets added to the soup at the same time, cover each bowl with plastic wrap, and chill until needed.
- Chicken Soup with Whatever Vegetables keeps for 5 days, a bit less if any of the components were already leftovers to start with. So make it ahead or keep leftovers within that timeframe. The soup can be frozen, but the texture of some ingredients (such as the zucchini in this version) may deteriorate somewhat after freezing.
*I don’t insist on homemade chicken broth in soups that have creamy, tomato-y or beany bases, but in a soup like this you can really taste the broth itself, and quality matters. To make homemade chicken broth:
- Fill a large soup pot 3/4 full with meaty chicken bones. (Use bones left over from cooked chicken, or trimmed from raw chicken such as backbones, wings, or bones removed from breasts to make cutlets – I save both cooked and raw bones in a big zip-lock bag in the freezer until I have enough for a batch of broth.)
- Throw in one halved onion, 2 carrots each snapped in half, 2 stalks of celery snapped in half, 6 whole peppercorns, and a teaspoon or so of kosher salt.
- Pour in enough cold water to almost cover the bones. Cover the pot.
- Bring the broth to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to medium low, move the lid so the pot is partially covered, and simmer for 2 to 3 hours. Occasionally rearrange the contents of the pot to make sure that all the chicken bones get into the broth – they’ll settle as they start to cook down.
- Taste the broth. If all you used were cooked chicken bones to start, the chicken flavor might be a little thin; if you want to boost it a bit, stir in a teaspoon or so of chicken base, such as Better than Bouillon. Then add salt and/or pepper if needed.
- Strain the broth through a colander into a large bowl, and then again through a fine-mesh sieve into a large liquid measuring cup. Let the broth cool to room temperature, then chill overnight.
- Skim off but don’t discard the layer of fat on the top of the cooled broth – use it as a cooking fat for vegetables or other chicken dishes.
Chicken Soup with Whatever Vegetables
This versatile soup can be adapted to incorporate any kinds of vegetables you like. If you choose to add a leafy green such as spinach, cut back on the chicken broth by 1 cup to compensate for the extra liquid in the spinach, and add the spinach along with the chicken in the last step. You can also add cooked grains or pasta at this stage, in addition to or in place of some of the vegetables.
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (or use chicken fat if you’ve made your own broth)
- 1 medium onion, diced
- 2 carrots, peeled and diced
- 2 stalks celery, diced
- 1 leek, white and light green parts, cleaned and thinly sliced
- 1 red bell pepper, diced
- Kosher salt
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme
- 1 teaspoon chopped fresh sage
- 1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary
- ¼ cup white wine
- 6 cups rich, flavorful homemade chicken broth (or use a good quality store-bought broth plus 1 teaspoon chicken base such as Better than Bouillon brand, or to taste)
- ¼ teaspoon Tabasco or other hot sauce, or to taste
- 1 medium zucchini, quartered lengthwise then cut into ½-inch slices
- Kernels cut from 2 ears of fresh corn (or 2 cups thawed frozen corn)
- 3 cups shredded cooked chicken (such as the breast meat from a rotisserie chicken)
- 2 tablespoons chopped parsley
Directions
- Step 1 Heat a soup pot over medium heat and add the olive oil or chicken fat. When the fat is hot, add the onion, carrots, celery and leeks, and season with salt and pepper. Sauté until the vegetables have started to soften, about 5 minutes.
- Step 2 Add the diced pepper and sauté 5 minutes.
- Step 3 Add the garlic, thyme, sage and rosemary cook 2 minutes more.
- Step 4 Turn up the heat to medium high. Add the wine, and cook until the liquid is almost completely reduced. Add the chicken broth, chicken base if you’re using store-bought broth, and Tabasco. Bring the soup to a simmer.
- Step 5 Once the soup is at a simmer, reduce the heat to medium and add the zucchini and corn. Simmer gently for 10 minutes.
- Step 6 Add the chicken and cook for 3 to 5 minutes more, or until the zucchini is just tender and the chicken is warmed through. Stir in the parsley. Taste and adjust the seasonings.
