This is my absolute favorite comfort food when I’m not feeling well or when it is unexpectedly freezing outside and I don’t want to leave the house! I try to keep these ingredients in my freezer / pantry at all times because it’s what I make when I wasn’t planning to make a feel-better soup! I nick-named it “Cheaters” Chicken Soup because it comes together in 20 minutes with no effort and it uses every shortcut possible but still hits the spot!
Now, you can totally make this using fresh vegetables and raw meat. I also love making a full from-scratch chicken soup with fresh onion, celery, and carrots sautéed in the pot and all that good stuff. But this recipe really hits the spot when I don’t want to go through all that trouble and I want a bowl of steaming soup in my hands as fast as possible with almost no effort.
The Ingredients
Liquid: 4 cups of chicken broth or a mix of 2 cups of broth and 2 cups of water. Frozen homemade is my favorite ingredient in the world, but boxed from the store works just fine, especially since this is a quick version recipe. I went many years working with boxed chicken broth and loved it. I do recommend looking for a low sodium version and when you do have a little time on your hands (like a whole day!) – I highly recommend you roast your own chicken and make your own stock.
Chicken: about 1.5 – 2 cups of pre-cooked chopped or shredded chicken works well with 4 cups of broth. I like a lot of chicken in my soup, but use the amount that works for your preference. I think this is a great way to use cooked dark meat if you are roasting your own chicken and freezing the cooked meat. If you don’t have frozen cooked chicken on hand and you still want a quick result, a rotisserie chicken from the store works really well with this recipe, or you can boil some raw chicken breast before you make the rest of the soup. It won’t take 20 minutes, but it will definitely work!
Vegetables: in this quick and easy version, I use a bag of the classic tiny chopped frozen mixed vegetables, again 1.5 – 2 cups. Look for the bag with the little cubes of carrots, chopped green beans, corn, and peas. Sometimes you can find it with lima beans, and that’s a treat. Any combination here will do. Of course if you have fresh vegetables on hand, you can chop them up small and add them in. Cook them in the broth a little longer until they are tender and they’ll probably be even better than frozen. There’s something about that little bag of mixed veggies that brings me back to my childhood though, which is partly why this dish is perfect when I’m in need of a little comfort.
Noodles: Arguably the best part of chicken soup, use your noodle of choice here. I really enjoy egg noodles in chicken noodle soup. I think the texture stands up to the chicken, they don’t get mushy in the broth, and they don’t soak up all the liquid. However, as with everything else, use your favorite or what you have on hand. Small tubes, shells, elbows, alphabets, orzo, barley, or rice would all work great in chicken soup. If you have a few extra minutes and the energy, a quick homemade dumpling is also great. I made those for the first time a few weeks ago with this simple recipe from The Spruce Eats and I will definitely be revisiting those again soon.
There’s a lot of choices you can make here to make this your own, but see the recipe below for my tried and true simple, classic chicken noodle soup – it’s so easy to make it yourself if you have the ingredients ready to go that you’ll never reach for a can when you’re feeling under the weather again.
Quick and Easy Chicken Soup
Course: SoupsCuisine: American ComfortDifficulty: Easy4
servings5
minutes15
minutes257
kcal20
minutesThis is my absolute favorite comfort food when I’m not feeling well or when it is unexpectedly freezing outside and I don’t want to leave the house! I try to keep these ingredients in my freezer / pantry at all times because it’s what I make when I wasn’t planning to make a feel-better soup! I nick-named it “Cheaters” Chicken Soup because it comes together in 20 minutes with no effort and it uses every shortcut possible but still hits the spot!
Ingredients
4 cups chicken broth, frozen homemade or boxed from the store
2 cups frozen chopped mixed vegetables
2 cups cooked chicken, chopped or shredded (frozen or fresh)
2 cups egg noodle or noodle of choice
Directions
- Add the chicken broth and any other frozen ingredients to a pot over medium heat. Cook until all foods are defrosted and the broth begins to boil.
- Add the rest of the ingredients to the pot and cook according to the time on the package for the pasta. Add more water if the pasta soaks up too much of the liquid.
- Taste the broth when the pasta is done and add salt and pepper, to taste.
Notes
- You can substitute 2 cups of water and 2 cups of broth instead of 4 cups of broth. You will have to season with extra salt and pepper at the end. You may also want to allow the ingredients to simmer a little longer to flavor the broth, or you can add a bouillon cube to the water for extra flavor.
- If the chicken or the vegetables are not frozen, do not add them in with the broth until after any frozen ingredients are defrosted and the water comes to a boil.
- Add any other fresh vegetables you have if you desire. Add them when the liquid comes to a boil. If cooking fresh vegetables, do not add the pasta until all of the vegetables are soft. The pasta should be the last thing to be added.
- Conversely, you can cook the pasta separately in its own water and add to the soup at the very end. If you don’t like the pasta to soak up the broth (especially if you are using rice or orzo), you can store the pasta separately from the soup and add directly to your bowl.
- Do not freeze cooked pasta in the soup or it may be mushy when you defrost it later. If you are going to freeze portions of this soup (even quicker of a meal next time!!), leave the pasta out and cook the pasta fresh next time you want to eat the soup.
