Immune-Boosting Chicken Wild Rice Soup
Sniffles got you down? You need a bowl of Immune-Boosting Chicken Soup to warm your soul and heal those sniffles!
Immune-Boosting Soup
So what makes this immune boosting? The turmeric! It gives the soup this gorgeous color and helps to fight against all those winter bugs! Turmeric is a strong antioxidant with powerful anti-inflammatory effects! My mother stirs a little into her morning cup of tea and loves it! She hasn’t gotten sick since she started! Turmeric is in a lot of currys (like this kid friendly recipe), so this soup has a bit of a Thai flare to it!
One Pot Soup Recipe
This Immune-Boosting Chicken Turmeric Soup is a one pot recipe! It all starts with the chicken. The next time you’re at the grocery store pay attention to all the options. Sometimes there will be packages with chicken already chopped up and ready for stir fry! That’s what I grabbed this time around. One less piece of prep work and less dishes to clean! Once the chicken starts to cook, add the veggies to get soft. After the seasonings go in and broth and rice join the pot. The rice will cook and absorb all the flavors! Wild rice is our favorite to use in soup. It has more texture and a more profound flavor than white or brown rice. Plus it holds up better in a soup.
Benefits of Turmeric
Turmeric makes home cooking more exciting! Remember that gorgeous color I was telling you about? Look how orange the turmeric is! The soup is more orangey until you add the coconut milk, then it turns little more creamy and light in color. Turmeric has been used for hundreds of years, and it hasn’t been until recently that we have been finding out about the amazing health benefits. Some of these include:
- Helps decrease inflammation
- Helpful for arthritis
- Antioxidant properties
- Improved brain function
- Lower risk of heart disease
If your kids aren’t rice fans, you could add pasta instead if you want! You won’t have to cook the soup as long, so just add your pasta when the recipe calls for rice and let cool for 7-9 minutes or until the pasta is cooked through!
Chop up your bell peppers as tiny as you want! I like to keep mine more chunky so that you can see their beautiful color. Sometimes kids will eat veggies better in a soup of they are cut very small. I use a food chopper to get them into really tiny pieces that are easy for kids to chew and also decrease texture sensitivities. Enjoy our Immune-Boosting Chicken Turmeric Soup!
Immune Boosting Chicken Turmeric Soup
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 pound chicken breast
- 1 cup bell pepper, red
- 1 cup, chopped onion
- 2 teaspoon turmeric, ground
- 1 teaspoon ginger root, fresh
- 3 teaspoon garlic
- 4 cup chicken broth, low-sodium
- 3/4 cup wild rice, raw
- 1 cup coconut milk, unsweetened
- 1/4 cup chopped basil, fresh
Instructions
- Place a large skillet/enamel pan on medium heat and drizzle with olive oil.
- Chop up chicken breast to desired size and let cook in pan for 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Chop up bell pepper and onion, add to chicken and stir. Cook until veggies are tender.
- Add turmeric, ginger, minced garlic and stir until fragrant.
- Add chicken broth and rice and bring to a boil. Reduce to simmer and then cover and let cook for 15 minutes.
- Add coconut milk (I used light) and basil and let cook for 3 more minutes. Taste to make sure the rice has cooked through and then serve warm!
Nutrition
Saw this on Instagram and made it for dinner tonight!! It was sooooo good. Only change I made was swapping carrots for bell pepper, adding celery and cooking the rice separately.
Hi Katie…did you actually use wild rice as per the recipe? It doesn’t look like wild rice in the picture. Advice would be great! Bx
The wild rice I used in the recipe cooked fairly light, so that plus the sauce made it look like normal rice. A great way to get the kids to eat it though!
Hi Lizzy, thanks for getting back to me. I went ahead and cooked some wild rice separately (for 45 minutes) and then added it at the end.
The soup was absolutely delicious. I’ve been handing the recipe out to everyone! Thank you. This is going on the ‘keep’ pile.
Incidentally, I made a turmeric latte with the leftover coconut milk. What a treat!
I love that! I’ve been trying to get more turmeric into my diet at well!
I cooked long grain brown rice separately as well and added it at the end!
Oooh! Sounds yummy!
I like the carrot sub, Katie A! Thank you!
I made with bone broth instead of regular broth, and it added richness to the flavor. My husband, who doesn’t favor healthy foods, even said it was awesome! Thanks for a recipe we really need this time of year.
This was amazing! Its actually very similar if not almost the same as Thai yellow curry! My kiddo and I loved it. Thank you!!
What would you recommend substituting the coconut milk for?
You could use almond or soy milk 🙂
Do you use fat free coconut milk, like in the cartoon, or full fat in a can?
We used coconut milk from the carton for this soup.
This was delicious. I added an extra cup of wild rice.
Can I make this in the pressure cooker/instapot? Can you please advise how best to do that? Thanks!
This article should help you: https://www.superhealthykids.com/recipes/the-ultimate-guide-for-making-any-crockpot-recipe-in-an-instant-pot/