Description
Best Chicken Soup – The perfect recipe to make on a relaxing, cozy Sunday afternoon – it is seriously the BEST chicken soup recipe! Feel free to add noodles if you want!
Ingredients
Scale
Broth
- (1) 5-6 pound whole roasting chicken (fresh or thawed)
- Salt
- Pepper
- 2 Tablespoons soft ghee (grass-fed butter, olive oil or vegan butter would work as well)
- 1 yellow onion, quartered
- 1 stalk celery, cut into 4–5 pieces
- 2 medium carrots, cut into 4 pieces each
- 1 head of garlic, cut of the top (or smash approx. 5–6 cloves)
- 1 sprig fresh rosemary
- 3–4 sprigs fresh thyme
- 1–2 fresh sage leaves
- 1 bay leaf
- 1–2 fresh sprig oregano
- 1 Tablespoon black peppercorn
Soup
- 8 cups chicken broth (you can also use 8 cups of water to make broth completely from scratch OR you could do 4 cups broth + 4 cups water. If you use broth your soup will only turn out that much richer. Just check your ingredients on the broth if concerned with Whole30)
- Shredded chicken
- 4 stalks of celery, sliced
- 6 medium-large carrots, peeled and sliced
- 1 sweet yellow onion, diced
- 1 bay leaf
- Optional: gluten-free noodles, diced parsnip, diced sweet potato, diced turnip
Instructions
Broth:
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
- Place chicken in 5 1/2 qt. Le Creuset Dutch Oven and rub all over with softened ghee
- Sprinkle with generous amounts of salt and pepper to coat.
- Place onion, carrots, celery and garlic around the chicken.
- Roast, uncovered, for 1.5 hours.
- Remove from oven and place on burner.
- Add broth (and/or water) and turn heat up to high.
- Add rosemary, thyme, sage, bay leaf, oregano and peppercorn.
- Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer and cover.
- Simmer (covered) as long as possible – if you used chicken broth I would suggest 2 hours – if you used water and broth I would suggest 3-4 hours – if you used all water I would suggest 4-6 hours.
Soup:
- Remove chicken and set aside to cool slightly.
- Strain broth and discard the cooked vegetables (they will be very soggy and not good for much after cooking for so long).
- Place strained broth back in your dutch oven.
- Once chicken is cooled enough, remove all the meat and place it in the broth (Note: depending on how big your chicken is, feel free not use all the chicken if you feel the chicken-broth ratio is off. If you want a thicker, chunkier soup then use it all, but if you want more of a broth-based soup then reserve some of the chicken for another purpose.)
- Also feel free to keep the chicken bones to make bone broth!
- Once the chicken meat is back in the broth, add your onion, celery, carrots and bay leaf.
- Taste and add salt and pepper, to taste, a pinch at a time.
- This would also be the time to add any other ingredients you want (sweet potato, turnip, parsnip or noodles).
- Let simmer approx. 8-10 minutes or until your vegetables are cooked, but still firm.
Notes
- Adaptable: This is one of those recipes that you can adapt very easily to fit what you like! My preferred method is to roast with ghee, use broth, simmer on low 2 hours (but I have also only simmered for 30 minutes – 1 hour and it is still amazing!).
- Time Saver: Since the chicken is already fully cooked you can reduce the cooking time in Step 10 of the Broth Instructions to whatever works for you!
- Bone Broth: you could add bone broth in Step 7 of Broth Instructions to make it extra gut-healing!
- Noodles: If you are adding noodles I would recommend cooking them separately beforehand and then adding to the soup – otherwise as they are cooking they will soak up all of the broth.
- Homemade Broth Version: I touched on this in the recipe card instructions, but wanted to highlight again – feel free to use water instead of broth in Instruction #7. It will need to cook much longer and you will need to add additional salt, but you will end up with some delicious homemade broth! If you have the time I highly recommend!
- Whole30/Paleo: If you are concerned with Whole30/Paleo just check those ingredients in your broth!
Nutrition
- Serving Size: Approx. 1 cup
- Calories: 160
- Sugar: 7.1 g
- Sodium: 1352.7 mg
- Fat: 5.2 g
- Carbohydrates: 20.3 g
- Protein: 9.7 g
- Cholesterol: 28.3 mg