This easy chicken soup recipe is a great quick healthy meal to put together if you don’t have the luxury of left over chicken lying about.
Chicken soup. That’s it, just chicken soup. If you’re prone to any winter cold or flu symptoms, like myself, then my advice is to start preparing for it NOW! I usually have a batch of this chicken soup ready for that in the freezer.
It’s made from just one chicken breast, leek, onion, rice and stock. It’s as simple as that. It tastes absolutely delicious and its only 234 calories per serving!
I have to be honest in that I’ve had this chicken soup recipe sitting as a “draft” in my recipe list for a few months now. I apologise, there were several reasons for me taking a while to decide on the posting date:-
1) It was summer when I wrote it.
2) I didn’t want to jinx the fantastic summer weather we were having by posting it. 😮
3) I kept looking at it thinking it was bland and plain and would anyone really be interested?
4) I kept re-doing the recipe photograph. Each time it turned out exactly the same. 😕
Silly really, and a bit of a time waster! It’s just a chicken soup recipe I’ve made for years. The whole point of my blog is to post and share my favourite healthy recipes isn’t it?
Anyway, I especially like this chicken soup recipe as you just put everything in the soup pot at different times and let it cook. It’s simple and easy to make.
Another reason why I like this chicken soup recipe (actually there are numerous reasons, too many to list and bore you with 😉 ) is that no oil is used. The whole dish is just wholesome ingredients, especially if you have time to make your own chicken stock. Mostly I don’t have the time to do that so I just use a couple of good quality low salt chicken stock cubes, which are fine.
I think we mostly associate chicken soup with what we were given by our parents when we were at home from school suffering the dreaded flu! Well it was for me anyway. Now it seems that there is actually some truth in the benefits of eating chicken soup.
I don’t think it has to be winter to enjoy soup. In fact I eat it all year round at lunchime, it’s so much lower in calories and carbs than sandwiches and I find it generally fills me up more!
Bowls of Chicken Soup after rambling in the Ochil Hills
So what did you get up to just the weekend just past?
Well, for me, this chicken soup was certainly called for after a cold day out in the hills!
I went out rambling about in the Ochil hills, just above Stirling, with a mate of mine I hadn’t seen all year. Its a fascinating part of Scotland and was the scene of many famous battles and scurmishes in the Jacobean times. Its quite desolate and untouched in certain parts by any farming or human actvity and so there’s plenty of nature to see and enjoy.
This is the Menstrie Burn (stream for my non-Scottish readers 🙂 ) you can see the leaves are just beginning to change to their autumnal colours.
The heather on the hillside is also beginning to turn brown and to loose its usual deep purple colours with the season change.
Despite the weather forecast being for rain, the sun managed to appear later in the day, and some blue sky too. The sunlight highlights the baron landscape…..so beautiful…
If you enjoyed that please see more in my hill walking posts.
- 1 small chicken breast or left over chicken approximately 150g - 180g
- 1 L chicken stock
- 40 g washed rice I use wholegrain basmati rice
- 1 large onion diced
- 1 Leek diced green and white parts separated
- 150 ml skimmed milk
- Salt and pepper
- 1 tbsp freshly chopped parsley
- Grill the chicken breast, allow to cool and then shred / cut up finely.
- Add stock to saucepan, bring to the boil and add the washed rice.
- Add the diced onion, the white diced parts of the leek and the shredded chicken and simmer for 30 minutes.
- Add the green diced parts of the leek and simmer for a further 10 minutes.
- Add the milk, check the vegetables are tender, season with salt and pepper and add the parsley for decoration.
Well it’s nearly mid-week already so I better get on trying to put the finishing touches to my Banoffee Cheesecake recipe.
Here’s hoping I’ve got it ready for Thursday for ya! 😀
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This sounds yummy!
Thanks Erin, it’s best if you can make your own chicken stock, but otherwise just as perfect with shop bought chicken stock / stock cubes! 🙂
If you get a chance to try it out let me know. 😀