I just got all my vaccines for the season, but I’m still steeling myself for the rogue cold or two. Enter chicken soup, as soothing for a stuffy nose as it is for the cold, dark days we’ve got ahead of us. While many people agree that chicken soup is a cure-all, they don’t necessarily agree on how to make it. Do you use a whole chicken? Do you use chicken breasts? Do you simplify it with rotisserie? Of course, there’s the whole stock debate too — canned or homemade? And so I decided to wade into all of that so you don’t have to.
For the purposes of this recipe testing, I narrowed my inquiry to carrot, celery, and onion-based chicken soups (as opposed to ones with ginger), and just chicken soup instead of chicken noodle, since noodles introduce too much variability. I chose three popular chicken soup recipes from across the internet, taking care to select ones with distinctly different techniques. I tested them all with boxed chicken stock for the sake of consistency, and because I think it’s what more people likely have at home.
Since I’m either cooking chicken soup when I’m sick or nursing a sick loved one, I considered the technical ease of each recipe (would I want to roast a chicken if I’m feeling horrible?) and the accessibility of the ingredients (would I want to run out for leeks?). When it came to the soup itself, I looked for tender vegetables and meat and a slurpable, salty broth. Here’s what I learned about making chicken soup, and what I’ll be doing in the future.
Lisa Bryan, Downshiftology
Search “chicken soup recipe” and the first result comes from Downshiftology’s Lisa Bryan. Compared to the version of chicken soup I grew up with, this one has some upgrades, with the inclusion of a leek, parsnips, and tarragon. The process is straightforward, though. You cook the vegetables. Then you add the herbs, stock, and boneless skinless chicken breasts, letting them poach in the stock. About 30 minutes and some shredding later, you’ve got soup.
Although Bryan claims the best chicken soup “doesn’t need much,” her recipe is fussier than I’m used to. Tarragon, parsnips, and leeks aren’t ingredients I consider fridge staples, and given the extra work of washing leeks, I found it a bit silly to use just one, especially when I was already cutting an onion. That being said, I liked the efficiency of cooking the chicken right in the soup.
My first takeaway from this recipe was that it results in a pretty crowded soup, especially when you consider that there are no noodles. The large amount of carrots and parsnips, almost in equal ratio, also give the soup a distinct sweetness that’s amplified by the slight licorice taste of tarragon. I’m sure the leek contributed to this too, but I didn’t find its flavor strong enough to really justify the extra step. Thanks to the gentle simmering, the meat remained pretty tender.
This was a good soup, but I think the parsnips will make or break your opinion here. In addition to adding sweetness to the broth, they contributed starchiness as they softened. Overall, this is definitely more for fans of chunky soup than brothy. I liked how much flavor the recipe coaxed from its vegetables, but I’m not sure the final result would fulfill the craving if what you’re used to is a deeply savory chicken soup.
Sandi Gaertner, Fearless Dining
This recipe from the gluten-free blog Fearless Dining ranks high on Google’s results for Instant Pot chicken soup. It’s an easy recipe that uses a whole chicken and doesn’t ask you to saute any vegetables — just dump it all in. Would this Instant Pot approach be any better?
Though I’ve been an Instant Pot hater in the past, this recipe made me understand the appliance’s merits. The pressurized cooking yielded unbeatably moist chicken that literally slid off the bone. Although the recipe uses the most meat of any that I tested, it doesn’t feel too dense with chicken since the meat shreds apart so much. Because the pressure helped extract collagen and fat, the broth ended up visibly enriched compared to the others, and shimmered when I opened the pot.
Still, I had my gripes. For one thing, despite the Instant Pot’s name, this ultimately took more time than the other recipes, given the pressurizing and depressurizing it required. Of course, if your priority is something hands-off, that might not matter.
My bigger issue, however, was with the recipe writing: Nowhere does it specify what to do with the chicken once the Instant Pot has finished. While I can obviously use context clues and past experience to figure out what to do, I’m not enthusiastic about a recipe that’s shoddily edited. It highlights how Google rankings can be untrustworthy: Bad recipes can bubble to the top as long as they do something right on the back-end.
The recipe also didn’t warn me that slide-off-the-bone tender meat would mean a chicken that’s hard to pull out of the pot — luckily, I caught on quickly enough and placed a metal spider under the bird with one hand while using my other hand to grab it with tongs. Nor did the recipe caution that because the chicken has softened so much, it might be a challenge to avoid snagging the skin while trying to shred the meat. These are the types of tips that show me a recipe developer is really considering a home cook’s success.
As much as I loved the texture of the meat and appreciated the collagen and fat from using the entire chicken, the flavor of the broth as written was surprisingly bland compared to the other recipes, and when I’m making chicken soup what I really want is delicious, sippable broth to sooth whatever ails me. Did this recipe make me curious about Instant Pot chicken soup? Yes. But I’d look for another recipe.
Kellie Hemmerly, The Suburban Soapbox
A lot of high-ranking chicken soup recipes are pretty similar, but what set this one apart for me was its call for a single bone-in, skin-on chicken breast, which you roast in the oven before shredding and adding to the soup. I found this idea interesting, but was curious about the actual utility of roasting, especially since the recipe doesn’t make use of the bones or specify what to do with the skin. The soup is otherwise straightforward: You soften the vegetables, add the cooked and shredded chicken, and simmer it all with stock and herbs.
The meat, which you roast at 425 degrees, certainly wasn’t as moist as the Instant Pot version, but it was barely any different than the poached chicken, maybe a tiny bit tougher. I liked having a snack of crisped chicken skin while I waited for the soup to simmer, but other than that, I couldn’t see much upside to roasting, if cooking the chicken in the broth and cutting down steps is an option. Of course, rotisserie chicken also seems like an obvious way to simplify things here.
I preferred the recipe’s ratio of inclusions to broth. It really let the broth shine and I liked that if I wanted to add noodles, I could without it feeling too chunky. Visually, it was clear and slightly richer in color than the others. Its flavor was satisfying — savory and salty in exactly the right way. (That it calls for salt to taste probably helped.) What really pushed it over the edge, though, was the dill, which I find perfect in chicken soup. Here, it wasn’t overpowering, just classic.
The Winner: Suburban Soapbox
This was a fascinating exercise in understanding how little tweaks can change the whole character of a soup, since all of these recipes were fundamentally so similar. For me, the savory, dill-infused broth of the Suburban Soapbox recipe shot it to the top of the ranking — a fortifying bowl I’d want to hang my head over the next time I have a cold. And I will, since there are now a few quarts in the freezer.
Additional photo credit: chicken soup photos by Bettina Makalintal
