Autumn is a special season for me. For some reason, I start making gallons of chicken stock in the colder months as autumn sets in. And with plenty of stock, I often make soups for dinner. This flavorsome homemade Chicken Vegetable Soup recipe is always first every year. It’s a bowl of goodness packed with fresh veggies, homemade chicken stock, tender chicken, and lots of love. Soul-satisfying doesn’t even come close to explaining how good this recipe is. Ready for warm, comforting flavors in a cozy bowl? Let’s get cooking!
This recipe is: Low-Carb, Gluten-Free, and Paleo.
Table of Contents
8 Reasons To Love This Recipe
I make this turnip chicken soup every autumn for its unique flavors and other reasons, including:
- A comforting and nourishing soup.
- It’s warm and hearty for cold days.
- Packed with veggies and chicken that taste great together.
- The entire family loves this recipe. It’s simple and tasty.
- Meal-prep friendly: easy to portion, freeze, and use in the future.
- It uses many low-carb ingredients.
- Easy-to-make recipe.
- Easily customizable to your taste preferences!
A Non-Traditional Chicken Vegetable Soup
Most old-fashioned chicken vegetable soup recipes include carrots, celery, onions, and potatoes. Maybe some thyme or other fresh herbs are thrown in there for some character. Sure, it’s traditional, but it is a little boring, no? My recipe has carrots, celery, and onions, but there’s so much more going on as well.
Instead of potatoes, I have used turnips. Yes, a turnip in chicken soup, interesting, right? Most students who came to my cooking school had never used a turnip before, so don’t feel alone if you haven’t either. Turnips are root vegetables with white and purple skin. They are beautiful and impart a nice, delicate flavor to the soup. Look for the smaller turnips at the grocery store, by the way. They are less woody and taste better.
We’ll also add zucchini. Its mild, almost sweet flavor adds dimension to the soup. Plus, it softens as it cooks, adding a great texture.
One of my favorite additions to this chicken vegetable soup is the venerable leek. As a cousin to the onion, it imparts a softer onion flavor that is more round on the tongue than onion. It takes on a mild onion and garlic flavor when paired with shallot. It’s just fantastic. You’re going to find a ton of depth in this soup.
So, let’s toss tradition out the window and start making some really memorable soup. If this sounds good to you, you’ve found the right chicken and vegetable soup recipe.
A Paleo Chicken Soup
As many of my readers know, I’m a fan of the paleo lifestyle. Although I don’t adhere to it 100%, it impacts my thoughts on almost everything I cook. Occasionally, you’ll find me eating some potatoes or rice. My family is not paleo; sometimes, rules are meant to be broken.
All that being said, this soup recipe is completely paleo. Here’s the scoop:
- The chicken stock I used was made from the bones of four rotisserie chickens we ate. If you haven’t made rotisserie chicken stock yet, you’re in for a pleasant surprise. Give it a shot!
- This paleo chicken soup uses organic chicken (mine is organic local chicken), carrots, onions, celery, shallot, zucchini, and leeks as the primary vegetables. There is nothing out of the ordinary here.
- We’ll use turnips instead of potatoes. Unlike the humble potato, this root vegetable is completely acceptable on the paleo diet. The turnip provides the same texture as the potato and incredible flavor but none of the downsides of the old spud.
Want even more veggies in this paleo chicken soup? Try some parsnips, a handful of breakfast radishes (they are longer than an American radish and have less of a spicy kick), or a couple of rutabagas.
Is Chicken Vegetable Soup Low-Carb?
Yes, chicken vegetable soup made with non-starchy vegetables and low-carb seasonings is low-carb friendly. This recipe is low-carb as it only has 9 g net carbs per serving. Moreover, I give tips on how to reduce the overall carb load!
Chicken Vegetable Soup Ingredients List
For this delicious chicken soup with turnip, get these ingredients:
- 8 cups chicken stock (homemade or low sodium)
- 5 medium carrots, diced
- 4 small turnips, or 2 large, washed & diced
- 3 skinless chicken breasts, trimmed and diced
- 2 Spanish onions, peeled and diced
- 2 medium leeks, trimmed and sliced
- ½ celery head, trimmed and sliced
- 1 medium zucchini, diced
- 1 shallot, sliced
- 4 tablespoons olive oil (for sautéing)
- 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
- 1 tablespoon kosher salt (to taste – might need more!)
- 1 teaspoon cracked black pepper (to taste – might need more!)
Ingredients Substitutions
Replace some of the ingredients listed above with these simple, high-quality alternatives:
- Chicken stock: Use vegetable broth, bone broth, store-bought chicken broth, or chicken bouillon cubes.
- Carrots: I don’t have a good substitute for carrots in this recipe; however, to lower the carb count, I would use 3 carrots rather than 5.
- Celery: For a slightly sweeter soup, use fennel (with the fronds removed, cored and diced).
- Spanish onions: White or yellow onions will do, but you will most likely need 3 of each to match the larger size of a Spanish onion. Use less onion for a lower-carb version.
- Turnips: Substitute with rutabaga or peeled radishes.
- Zucchini: Swap for yellow squash or green beans.
- Leeks: Try shallots (increase by 2 shallots to control the carb count), or add chopped green onions (more of the whites than the greens). Leeks are a higher-carb ingredient. Find more substitution ideas for leeks.
- Shallot: Use the same amount of red onion if you would prefer.
- Raw chicken breasts: Replace with 6 skinless chicken thighs or some leftover chicken.
- Olive oil: Use avocado oil, ghee, or clarified butter.
Additional Ingredients
These great additions make this the best chicken vegetable soup recipe ever:
- Alternate Proteins: Use pulled pork, shredded chicken, shredded beef, or more.
- Avocado slices: Avocado adds healthy fats and a creamy texture. It complements the soup and provides a satisfying element to the meal.
- Zoodles: If you have a spiralizer and an extra zucchini, make a good-sized batch of zoodles (they shrink down to nothing when the hot liquid hits them). Serve the soup over the zoodles for a flavor-filled meal.
Note: The additional ingredients are not part of the original recipe. Use them only to enhance the chicken veggie soup flavors and texture.
Cooking Tools
The simple chicken turnip soup recipe requires basic tools that are easy to work with:
How To Cook Chicken Vegetable Soup: Complete Cooking Guide
Cooking Method
- Simmering
Preparation Steps
- Gather the tools and ingredients.
- Wash, peel, and dice the carrots and turnips.
- Trim and slice the celery stalks.
- Peel and dice the Spanish onions.
- Wash and dice the zucchini.
- Trim and slice the leeks.
- Slice the shallots.
- Trim and dice the boneless chicken breasts into bite-size pieces
Cooking Instructions
- Heat a large, heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the chicken stock.
- Heat a large skillet over high heat. Add a tablespoon of olive oil. When the oil shimmers in the pan, add the carrots and turnips with a good pinch of salt. Cook for 3 minutes, then add the zucchini. Cook until lightly browned, and then add to the hot broth.
- Add another 2 tablespoons of olive oil to the skillet. Add in the remaining veggies and a good pinch or two of salt. Stir and cook for 7-8 minutes until lightly browned. Add to the chicken stock.
- Pour the remaining tablespoon of oil into the skillet. When the oil shimmers again, add the diced chicken breasts. Season well with salt and pepper. Cook until lightly browned, and then add to the chicken stock.
- Bring the chicken stock to a boil and quickly reduce the heat so the stock simmers. Cook for about 30 minutes or until all the veggies are tender. Add half of the balsamic vinegar and taste. If the soup needs more acid, add the remaining balsamic. Adjust the seasonings with salt and pepper to taste. Ladle into bowls and enjoy!
Step 1: Gather up all your fresh ingredients. I have homemade chicken stock and all my veggies are washed and ready to be chopped up.
Step 2: Dice up all the veggies and chicken. Slice the shallot and leeks. Get ready to saute everything next!
Step 3: Saute the veggies. I like them lightly browned, which is a step farther than just sweating the veggies. Cook them in batches to avoid overcrowding the pan.
Step 4: Bring the chicken vegetable soup to a boil and then step down the heat to a simmer. Taste and adjust the seasonings now too! Just about ready to eat.
💡 My Pro Tip
This chicken veggie soup recipe is enough for a whole family. Get a large enough soup pot to handle the large quantity of soup. I always make more than my family can finish, so we have extra to freeze for future enjoyment.
Sometimes, this soup needs what seems like an enormous amount of salt. Be careful when you season with salt: add a little, stir, and taste again.
To start, add only half of the balsamic vinegar. The vinegar adds a subtle acid note to the soup, punching up the flavor nicely. If you need to add more, go ahead, but do so sparingly.
Turnips are wonderful in this soup, but if you don’t want to use them, substitute them for a waxy potato.
Chicken Vegetable Soup Seasoning
Let’s discuss what to add to chicken soup and what to leave out. My philosophy regarding seasoning is simple: keep it simple when appropriate, but swing for the fences when the time is right. I rarely find myself in limbo between these two extremes. For instance, we swing for the fences with tons of spice in my fantastically delicious grilled chicken wings recipe. With chicken soup, we need a different seasoning approach.
I keep seasoning super simple with chicken soup—salt and pepper all the way. The key to seasoning this dish is to season the layers as they are cooking rather than wait until the end to adjust the seasoning. If you season the carrots, turnips, and zucchini before they are added to the chicken stock, then you will need to adjust less later in the process. If you want to add pepper to those steps, go ahead!
The only other ingredient I use to enhance the flavor of chicken soup is balsamic vinegar. Balsamic is a less intrusive acid than lemon or red wine vinegar. Its sweetness plays well with the salt we will add to the soup. We want an acid in the soup to create interesting flavors for our palette. Think of it as slightly emphasizing a high note in perfect harmony. What was good turned into something incredible. Yes, that is what we will do with this chicken soup recipe.
One note of caution: Be careful how much seasoning you add to the soup. Make sure to taste, adjust, stir, and taste again continually. It is very hard to remove too much salt from a soup and even harder to correct too much acid without changing to a creamy-style soup to tame the acid. So be careful when adding the seasonings.
⏲️ Time-Saving Tips
- Dice all those veggies ahead of time. This recipe calls for a lot of knifework, which takes a huge chunk of cooking time.
- Buy store-bought prepared veggies. Some stores are now selling a cleaned and diced onion, carrot, and celery mix. I’ve seen this mainly in the winter months, but if you can find it, it’s a huge time saver.
What to Serve with Chicken Vegetable Soup?
My hearty chicken vegetable soup is a complete meal in a bowl. However, you can make it more filling and enhance its flavor and texture with several accompaniments:
- Sautéed Spinach with Bacon and Shallots: The hearty greens are a good boost of flavor to the soup. Pair them for a light dinner.
- Low-Carb Garlic Bread: For a filling meal, dip garlic bread made with almond flour or any other low-carb flour into the delicious chicken vegetable soup.
- Keto Cheese Chips: Serve the hearty soup with these luscious little bites for a healthy lunch. Eat them alone or dip them in the soup for plenty of flavor.
- Cauliflower Purée: Serve the cauliflower purée as the soup’s base. It will absorb all the flavors from the homemade vegetable chicken soup.
Storage and Reheating Instructions
Storage
- Store the leftover soup in an airtight container in the fridge for up to a week.
Reheating
- Reheat in a soup pan on the stove over medium heat until warmed through. You can also microwave leftover soup on medium heat until warm again.
Freezing
- This soup will keep well in the freezer for quite some time and quickly defrost on the stove. If you need to defrost the chicken vegetable soup quickly, simply take the frozen soup block out of the airtight container and put it in a pot with a tight-fitting cover. Add about ½ cup of water (or stock if you have it available) and heat over medium-high heat until hot enough to consume. Sometimes, I use tongs to grab the melting soup and flip it over in the pan. It seems to help it defrost more quickly.
Recipe Conclusion
This is hands-down one of the best homemade Chicken Vegetable Soups out there. There are many ways to make it even heartier and more filling for the colder seasons. The easiest way is to add some cooked white or brown rice to the bowl of soup. Although this doesn’t conform to the paleo lifestyle, it sure is good. But if you want to keep it completely paleo, add fresh herbs like bay leaves, or fresh parsley, and pour it over cauliflower rice. It’s delicious.
Want to add something completely unexpected? Try some zoodles (zucchini noodles made in a spiralizer). I also put zoodles in a different homemade chicken soup recipe that is absolutely delicious—and completely paleo, too!
What vegetables do you use in your chicken soups that aren’t traditional? What’s your favorite comforting bowl of soup? I’d love to know! I hope that you enjoy this recipe as much as we do. As always, join in the conversation on Facebook and Instagram. Happy eating!
More Soup Recipes To Try
Explore my other simple and flavorful chicken soup recipes:
FAQs
Yes, mixing chicken and veggie broth or stock to achieve a richer, more complex flavor is a common practice.
Use low-carb thickening agents like xanthan gum, guar gum, vegetable purée, cheese, heavy cream, or coconut cream.
Yes, it’s easier to add uncooked chicken to the soup. However, the soup will not be as delicious as when you lightly brown the chicken before adding it.
Homemade Chicken Vegetable Soup
Ingredients
- 8 cups chicken stock homemade or low sodium
- 5 medium carrots diced
- 4 small turnips or 2 large, washed & diced
- 3 skinless chicken breasts trimmed and diced
- 2 Spanish onions peeled and diced
- 2 medium leeks trimmed and sliced
- ½ celery head trimmed and sliced
- 1 medium zucchini diced
- 1 shallot sliced
- 4 tablespoons olive oil for sautéing
- 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
- 1 tablespoon kosher salt to taste - might need more!
- 1 teaspoon cracked black pepper to taste - might need more!
Instructions
Preparation Steps
- Gather the tools and ingredients.
- Wash, peel, and dice the carrots and turnips.
- Trim and slice the celery stalks.
- Peel and dice the Spanish onions.
- Wash and dice the zucchini.
- Trim and slice the leeks.
- Slice the shallots.
- Trim and dice the boneless chicken breasts into bite-size pieces
Cooking Instructions
- Heat a large, heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the chicken stock.
- Heat a large skillet over high heat. Add a tablespoon of olive oil. When the oil shimmers in the pan, add the carrots and turnips with a good pinch of salt. Cook for 3 minutes, then add the zucchini. Cook until lightly browned, and then add to the hot broth.
- Add another 2 tablespoons of olive oil to the skillet. Add in the remaining veggies and a good pinch or two of salt. Stir and cook for 7-8 minutes until lightly browned. Add to the chicken stock.
- Pour the remaining tablespoon of oil into the skillet. When the oil shimmers again, add the diced chicken breasts. Season well with salt and pepper. Cook until lightly browned, and then add to the chicken stock.
- Bring the chicken stock to a boil and quickly reduce the heat so the stock simmers. Cook for about 30 minutes or until all the veggies are tender. Add half of the balsamic vinegar and taste. If the soup needs more acid, add the remaining balsamic. Adjust the seasonings with salt and pepper to taste. Ladle into bowls and enjoy!
Notes
Nutrition
“This website provides approximate nutrition data and information for convenience and as a courtesy only.”
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7 Responses
Made this soup tonight and it was delicious! Not like any other vegetable soups I have tasted. Salt and Pepper is the only seasoning so I wasn’t sure if it would have much flavor but boy was I wrong.
Hi-
Thanks for stopping over and checking out this recipe- I really appreciate it. Yeah, it is just a really straightforward soup that has big flavor without the need for a ton of seasoning.
Hope that you have a great day in the kitchen-
Take care,
Scott
Cool man.
It is cool. Thanks!
This soup is insane! My husband said if I’d made it years ago he would’ve married me sooner 😂🤦♀️
Made this chicken vegetable soup again, and it’s always so heartwarming. It’s ideal for chilly days!