This Chicken, Vegetable and Rice Soup is the ultimate nourishing comfort meal that the whole family will love. It's an easy, one-pot soup that's bursting with familiar flavour and goodness.
The ingredients in this dish are simple and wholesome. Onion, carrots, and celery form the classic base, thinly sliced so they soften beautifully as they cook-I like to use a mandolin for quick, even slices. Fresh thyme adds a gentle, herby warmth, while the rice gives extra texture and means you don't need to serve it with bread if you don't want to. If you like, a little wild rice can be added alongside the white rice for an even more contrasting texture. I use a white rice/wild rice mix. Pre-sliced mushrooms keep prep easy and bring a savoury depth. Using bone-in chicken thighs means they stay juicy and tender while giving the dish a deeper, rich flavour.
And if someone in the family is in need of a soothing chicken soup to feel better, this chicken and rice vegetable soup recipe will hit the mark. It truly is a "chicken soup for the soul".
It's also suitable for children of all ages including weaning babies, toddlers and fussy eaters. See here for how to adapt this recipe for your family >
How to make Chicken, Vegetable and Rice Soup
Time needed: 1 hour and 25 minutes
Making this Chicken, Vegetable and Rice Soup is essentially a 5 step process:
- Sauté
Fry the onions, carrots, and celery until softened, around 6 to 8 minutes. Add the garlic and fry for another minute.
- Simmer
Add the stock, thyme, bay leaf, salt (hold off adding if sharing with little one) and black pepper and the chicken thighs. Cover and simmer for 30 mins.
- Add the rice
And stir in, then cook for 5 more minutes.
- Finally, add the mushrooms
Stir in, and cook for a further 5.
- Shred the Chicken
Remove the chicken thighs, and shred. Add back into the pan and stir then serve.
FAQ's for my Chicken Vegetable and Rice Soup
- Soup base vegetables. These are onion, carrot and celery. I like to thinly slice them using a mandoline for speed and ease. You can also use a shop bought soup base vegetable mix or even a soffritto mix or if you prefer (the veg will be diced small however). You will also be fine using frozen versions, just allow extra frying time. You'll have to measure with your heart for these pre-prepared versions as I've not tested them.
- Chicken thighs. You'll want these to be bone-in and skin-on for the depth of flavour they will add to the soup.
- Rice. You can either use white rice, ideally basmati, or a wild rice and basmati rice mix. If you've not had wild rice before, bear in mind that wild rice has a harder bite to it. The wild rice mix will have much more basmati in it than wild rice.
- Mushrooms. Save time and by pre-sliced! Usually they cost the same anyway.
- Herbs. You'll need either fresh or dried thyme (ideally fresh!) and a bay leaf.
- Other ingredients. You'll need garlic, chicken stock, salt and black pepper to taste. See Baby & Toddler section for tweaks to these.
If you already have boneless chicken thighs, or you can't be bothered or think you won't have time to get the chicken off the bone, you can use boneless and skinless chicken thighs for this soup recipe. However, I would recommend you stick to bone-in and skin-on chicken thighs because the skin and the bones will add extra depth of flavour to your broth.
You can prepare much of the ingredients in advance. The onion, carrots and celery can all be prepped and stored together in an airtight container in the fridge. You could also chop your thyme and store that also in the fridge, seperately.
You can often buy pre-prepared vegetables for soup bases or spaghetti bolognese (soffritto mix), in supermarkets. They come diced or sliced but only go for mixes with carrots, celery and onion. Sometimes they are frozen, you'll need to fry for a bit longer if so.
Yes, you can increase the quantities. It's a great one to batch cook or feed a crowd with, so long as you have an extra large cooking pot. Doubling the recipe will feed 10 people at least. It's also a good one to keep warm on the stove for a while. Keep the soup covered while you shred the chicken, then once you add it back in, turn the heat on low to heat through for a few minutes before serving.
To adjust serving sizes, use the scale buttons top right of the ingredients list in the recipe below.
You can store any Chicken, Vegetable and Rice Soup leftovers in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days (cook day +2). Leftovers can also be frozen, just defrost for 24 hours in the fridge and reheat in the microwave, stirring halfway until steaming hot all the way through. Leftovers can also be heated on the stove in a saucepan over a medium-low heat, stirring often, until piping hot all the way through.
This Chicken, Vegetable and Rice Soup is suitable for gluten, dairy, nut-free diets. It is not suitable for vegans or vegetarians.
Adapting My Chicken, Vegetable and Rice Soup For Your Family
Eating together is beneficial for families of all ages and stages, for a multitude of reasons; nutritional, behavioural, psychological and for healthy family functioning. This section will show you how to tweak this Chicken, Vegetable and Rice Soup recipe for sharing with a weaning baby, toddler or a fussy eater, which will help make it easier to eat together as a family.
Keeping Fussy Eaters Happy
You may find your picky eater tolerates this chicken and vegetable soup with rice as it's made with classic ingredients and familiar flavours. I particularly recommend this if carrots are one of the only vegetables you're fussy eater will eat. If they detest mushrooms, you can simply pick them out their serving.
Making My Chicken, Vegetable and Rice Soup Suitable for Baby Weaning
This Chicken, Vegetable and Rice Soup is suitable from 6 months + when their serving is puréed, with the following adjustments:
- Use no salt or low salt chicken stock
- Do not add salt to the cook, dish their serving up first and then add salt and stir it for everyone else. Or if you want to keep leftovers for them, just add salt to your own servings
- Don't add wild rice as the texture is harder
How to Serve to Babies & Toddlers
SPOON-FEEDING
6 months
Add some soup to your stick blender pot or food chopper (if you have that one that purées) and whizz into a purée.
7-9 months
Can purée into a smooth soup as per 6 months or have it a slightly chunkier texture. To achieve that, add their soup to your food chopper. Use short sharp pulses to finely chop into very small pieces.
10-12 months
Again, can purée into a smooth soup or serve as a chunkier soup. Add the soup to your food chopper pot. Gradually pulse, just a few times then check the consistency. It should be lumpy with small pieces.
12 month +
Chop the chicken, carrots and mushrooms into bite-size pieces.
I've also added these notes to the bottom of the recipe so you have them to hand when you come to cook.
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Chicken Vegetable and Rice Soup
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 onion, thinly sliced (I use mandoline for all the veg)
- 3 medium carrots, thinly sliced
- 2 celery stalks, thinly sliced
- 2 garlic cloves, crushed
- 2 ltr hot chicken stock (I like to use stock pots)
- 2 tablespoon finely chopped fresh thyme or 2 tps dried
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 kg skin-on & bone-in chicken thighs
- 150 g white rice or white & wild rice mix
- 250 g sliced mushrooms
- Black pepper & salt to taste
See notes for baby & toddler tweaks
Instructions
- Heat the oil in a large saucepan over a medium-low heat and add in the onions, carrots and celery and fry for 6-8 minutes, until softened.
- Add the garlic and fry for 1 minute, stirring.
- Pour in the stock, add the thyme, bay leaf, salt and black pepper and give it a stir. Nestle in the chicken thighs. Increase the heat to high and bring to the boil. Then cover, turn heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes.
- At that point stir in the rice, bring back to the boil, cover and turn heat down to low. Cook for 5 minutes.
- Next, stir in the mushrooms, bring back to the boil, cover and reduce heat to low again. Simmer for a further 5 minutes.
- Remove the bay leaf and chicken thighs and leave the soup to cool a little while you shred or chop the thighs into bitesize pieces, being sure to discard the skin and all the bones. Then add the chicken back into the pan and stir well before dishing up. Serve as is or with some buttered bread or toast.
Baby & Toddler
STORAGE
Nutrition
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