This Chicken Wild Rice Soup is deliciously rich and creamy soup without the use of heavy cream or flour. You can make this healthy and budget-friendly comfort food on the stovetop, crockpot or Instant Pot.
We also love this Instant Pot chicken wild rice soup, Instant Pot chicken and rice soup and marry me chicken soup.
This healthy chicken wild rice soup is loaded with fall apart shredded chicken, tender carrots, potatoes, celery, and of course, wild rice simmering in a creamy broth that is exploding with crazy flavor!
After realizing how quick and easy it is to make this healthy soup in just over an hour, you’ll never want to go back to Panera again!
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- Easy: While it may need a bit of simmering time, this soup requires minimum chopping and all steps are very easy to follow.
- Delicious: Lots of flavor from the earthy mushrooms, veggies, aromatics and seasonings. Not to mention everyone loves anything creamy!
- Healthier: No heavy cream is used to make this chicken wild rice soup.
- One pot meal: Anytime I can make dinner in one pot with easy clean up, it’s a win!
- Freezer and meal-prep friendly: Prep soup ahead of time and freeze until you’re ready to cook it. Portion any leftovers and enjoy for lunches throughout the week.
Ingredients for Healthy Chicken Wild Rice Soup
- Chicken: Any chicken works whether it’s raw, bone-in and skin-on or boneless and skinless. Examples would be chicken breasts, chicken thighs or chicken drumsticks. Also cut up whole chicken is great.
- Dried mushrooms: If you don’t have dried mushrooms, use fresh brown mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms or white mushrooms.
- Vegetables: Onion, garlic, carrots, celery, potatoes.
- Wild rice: Wild rice has a very unique taste and texture and I don’t recommend to replace it with any other rice.
- Milk: Whole milk is the best replacement for heavy cream.
- Liquid: Water or low sodium chicken broth or Instant Pot chicken broth.
- Seasoning: Dried thyme, mustard, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Try poultry seasoning or rosemary instead of thyme.
- Garnish: Parsley to give it a nice herbaceous finish.
- Butter: Used for sauteing the vegetables and adds a creamy layer of flavor.
How to Make Healthy Chicken Wild Rice Soup
- Saute vegetables with spices. Melt butter in a large heavy bottom pot and add onion and garlic to saute. Add veggies and seasoning and continue to saute for 5 more minutes.
- Add remaining ingredients: Add chicken, potatoes, wild rice, water, or broth.
- Cook: Bring mixture to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer and cook for 55 minutes or until rice and potatoes are tender.
- Shred chicken: Place chicken onto plate and shred with 2 forks and set aside.
- Make it creamy: Whisk in the milk and prepared mustard and blend with an immersion blender a bit. Or leave it as is.
- Final step: Add shredded chicken back in as well as a handful of chopped parsley. Enjoy!
Tips for Best Results
- Don’t replace the wild rice: Unfortunately, white or brown rice will become overly mushy in this recipe. If that’s all you have, make this turkey and rice soup (use chicken) or Instant Pot chicken and rice soup instead. Or some readers have had luck with cooking rice separately and then stirring it in at the end.
- If you don’t have an immersion blender: Blend a small amount in your blender, then stir back into soup. Do this in batches until desired soup consistency is reached.
- Adjust consistency: This soup will thicken over time. Adding 7 cups of liquid is great if you want a thick soup right away. Adding 8-9 cups is good if you plan to consume the soup a couple hours later as it will become thicker by then. You can always adjust the soup next day with more broth.
Variations
- Cooked chicken: If you have any leftover cooked cubed or shredded chicken you can use that instead. Add after cooking and use chicken broth and not water for cooking the soup as you will skip cooking the chicken.
- Dairy free: Try coconut milk for the same creamy result. Or you can use any nut or oat milk but the flavor will change.
- Additional vegetables: Add some diced sweet potato, butternut squash or small broccoli florets before cooking, or chopped spinach or kale after the blending step.
- Slow cooker: Saute the vegetables and spices. Add chicken, potatoes, wild rice, water or broth in a large slow cooker. And cook on Low for 8-10 hours or on High for 5-6 hours.
- Instant Pot: Throw all of the ingredients into the Instant Pot and cook for 25 minutes on High pressure.
How to Make a Freezer Meal
Do you like to plan ahead for busy weeknights or days when you don’t feel like cooking? Turn this chicken wild rice soup recipe into a freezer meal and have it ready when you are!
- Instant Pot: In a large Ziploc bag, add all of the ingredients except water, milk, and parsley. Seal and freeze for up to 3 months. Cook from frozen with 7 cups water or chicken broth on High pressure for 25 minutes, wait 10 minutes, and release remaining pressure.
- Slow cooker: In a large Ziploc bag, add all of the ingredients except water, milk, and parsley. Seal and freeze for up to 3 months. Thaw in the fridge for 24 hours and then cook on Low for 10 hours or on High for 6 hours with the recommended amount of water or broth. You can skip cooking the veggies before adding them to the bag. Either way, the soup is going to be delish.
- After cooking: Remove the chicken and shred it with 2 forks. Blend the soup a bit with an immersion blender until desired consistency. Add chicken back in with the parsley. Stir and serve hot.
Serving Recommendations
This soup doesn’t need much else except for a basket of crusty bread like Greek yogurt bread or cottage cheese bread, or low carb almond flour bread for sopping up that delicious broth.
An appetizer is always a nice addition to get things going, especially if you’re serving company. Try Parmesan mushrooms, baked zucchini fritters, or garlic hummus with fresh veggies or crackers.
How to Store and Reheat
Store: Refrigerate in an airtight container for up to 5 days.
Freeze: Freeze chicken and wild rice soup leftovers in a glass container for up to 3 months.
Reheat: Thaw in the fridge overnight or on the counter for 4 hours. Simmer on low heat for 10 minutes on the stove top.
FAQs
A blend usually comes with brown or white rice, which both have different cooking times, and different levels of starch. While a wild rice blend is great for many things, for this recipe in particular, I’d say “no”.
As stated above, the soup will thicken over time. If you’re in a hurry to eat it and it’s not as thick as you’d like, you could also make a cornstarch slurry to thicken it quickly.
Yes. If you are OK with adding heavy cream to your soup, then by all means do that.
Yes. Saute the veggies with spices and store them in an airtight container for up to 2 days. You can also chop the potatoes and keep them refrigerated in a bowl of cold water. When you’re ready to make the soup, combine with remaining ingredients and cook as per instructions.
More Chicken Recipes to Try
- Healthy chicken and rice casserole
- Healthy chicken noodle soup
- Instant Pot chicken and rice
- Chicken noodle vegetable soup
- Slow cooker chicken noodle soup
- Healthy white chicken chili
- Instant Pot white chicken chili
- Crock pot chicken and rice
Healthy Chicken Wild Rice Soup
Equipment
Ingredients
- 1.5 pounds any raw chicken pieces
- 1 large onion finely chopped
- 2 large garlic cloves minced
- 2 large carrots coarsely chopped
- 3 large celery stalks diced
- 2 large potatoes diced
- 1/2 cup dried mushrooms or 2 cups fresh brown mushrooms sliced
- 1 1/2 cups wild rice
- 7 cups water or chicken broth low sodium
- 1/2 teaspoon thyme dried
- 1 tablespoon prepared mustard
- 2 teaspoons garlic powder
- 1 3/4 teaspoons salt
- Ground black pepper to taste
- 2 cups whole milk
- Small bunch parsley finely chopped
- 1 tablespoon butter for stovetop only
Instructions
Stovetop
- Preheat large heavy bottom pot or Dutch oven on medium heat, add butter and wait until it has melted. Add onion and garlic; saute for 3-4 minutes.
- Add carrots, celery, fresh mushrooms (if using), thyme, garlic powder, salt and pepper; saute for 5 minutes.
- Add chicken, potatoes, dried mushrooms (if not using fresh), wild rice, water/broth.
- Cover, bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low and cook for about 55 minutes.
Slow Cooker
- Preheat medium skillet on medium-high heat, add butter and wait until it has melted. Add onion and garlic; saute for 3-4 minutes.
- Add carrots, celery, fresh mushrooms (if using), thyme, garlic powder, salt and pepper; saute for 5 minutes.
- Transfer to a large slow cooker along with chicken, potatoes, dried mushrooms (if not using fresh), wild rice and water/broth. Cover and cook on Low for 8-10 hours or on High for 5-6 hours.
Instant Pot
- In Instant Pot, add chicken, onion, garlic, carrots, celery, potatoes, mushrooms, wild rice, water/broth, thyme, mustard, garlic powder, salt and pepper. Cover, set pressure valve to Sealing and press Pressure Cook on High or Manual for 25 minutes. After wait for 10 minutes and do Quick Release to release the pressure by turning the valve to Venting.
After cooking (for all versions)
- Remove chicken onto plate and shred with 2 forks.
- To the pot, add milk and mustard. Using an immersion blender give a few pulses until soup is desired thickness (don’t forget to stir and feel free to adjust thickness with extra water and spices).
- Add shredded chicken and parsley, stir well.
- Serve hot with crusty bread for dipping.
Video
Notes
- Store: Refrigerate in an airtight container for up to 5 days. Reheat in a small pot covered while simmering on low.
- Freeze: Freeze soup leftovers in an airtight container for up to 3 months. Thaw in fridge overnight or counter top for 4 hours.
- Raw chicken: I used chicken breasts in the stovetop and drumsticks in the slow cooker version. Any chicken works – raw, bone in/skin on or boneless/skinless or even cut up whole chicken.
- Wild rice: Wild rice has a very unique taste that makes this soup so delicious. Unfortunately, white or brown rice can not be substituted in this recipe.
- Instant Pot: In a large Ziploc bag, add all ingredients except water, milk and parsley. Seal and freeze for up to 3 months. Cook from frozen with 7 cups water or broth on High pressure for 25 minutes, wait 10 minutes and release remaining pressure.
- Slow cooker: In a large Ziploc bag, add all ingredients except water, milk and parsley. Seal and freeze for up to 3 months. Thaw in the fridge for 24 hours and then cook on Low for 10 hours or on High for 6 hours. You can skip sauteing or saute veggies before adding to a bag. Either way soup is gonna be delish.
- After cooking: Remove chicken and shred with 2 forks. Blend a bit with an immersion blender until desired consistency. Add chicken and parsley. Stir and serve hot.
This was a wonderful soup, Olena! We loved it. I substituted a reasonable number of baby potatoes cut into quarters for the two large potatoes. I also used frozen chicken breasts. Otherwise no changes, and made it in our Instant Pot. Turned out great! The two of us had it for dinner one night, I put the rest in the fridge, and we had more for lunch today. I will probably freeze the rest for another meal later on.
Joel! So glad that you enjoyed the soup!
Even my kids love this recipe. We made it in the instant pot and adapted it a bit. We left the potatoes, milk, and parsley out. I also used a wild rice blend. Yummy. This is a keeper.
Hi Heather! So happy to hear you and your kids enjoyed this soup so much!
I made this for dinner yesterday and it came out so thick. My husband and I ate it but my kids wouldn’t touch it. I ended up throwing it out. What did I do wrong? I am a newbie at the Instapot.
Did you make any substitutions like used another kind of rice instead of wild rice? Also you have always thin out any soup with broth and season a bit more after instead of throwing it out.
Two questions…if not making this as a freezer meal but I have to end up freezing some leftovers, can I freeze the liquid, as well?
Also, if I’m using raw chicken and using the stovetop, I don’t have to cook the chicken before letting it sit for 45 minutes, right?
Hi Sarah. 1. yes, you can freeze soup leftovers no problem for 3 months in airtight container. 2. You cook raw chicken with other ingredients for 45 minutes. Hope this helps. 🙂
Followed the recipe to a tee. The rice seems to be cooked beyond recognition. ? Smells delish. We’ll see how it turns out.
Couple questions – dried mushrooms. 1/2 cup seems like a lot. In my experience their flavor is super potent and a little goes a long way. Also they are super expensive. I have dried porcini on hand but in other recipes I use maybe .25 oz. also, if the chicken is cooked in water I imagine it won’t be very flavorful. Does it work to cook the chicken in broth? Planning to make in the next few hours to feed a crowd so speedy response appreciated!
You can add as many dried mushrooms as to your personal taste. Chicken cooked in water creates broth, especially with bone in and dark meat. But you can use broth if you wish or use breasts only. Enjoy!
Great soup! I must have used a blender a bit too long because my soup was more like a stew. However, I enjoyed the taste and texture.
I’m so happy to read this! Thanks for your positive feedback, Zarina!
I hope to make this as a freezer meal. Do you recommend cooking it all before then adding the water and milk after thawing?
You add water during cooking and milk after. There are freezer meal instructions in the recipe card. 🙂
This is so good! Tastes every bit as rich as soups with tons more cream, flour and salt. Definitely on my short list of favorite winter soups!
Thank you for your amazing review, Cynthia!
Hearty!
Awesome!
I’m looking forward to trying this recipe tomorrow. Should the mustard that’s called for be dry (spice form) or wet mustard (that you would put on a sandwich)? Thanks!
Wet. Please let me know how you like the soup.:)