This easy Chicken Rice Soup recipe is a healthy soup that’s perfect for chilly days! It’s loaded with vegetables and brown rice, simmered in chicken broth and finished with a touch of creaminess.
This is one of our favorite homemade Chicken and Rice Soup recipes and has unbelievable flavor and is easy to meal prep and make ahead for a busy week!
I am a big time soup lover, and I love it all!
Minestrone Soup, Stuffed Pepper Soup, Italian Slow Cooker Chicken Noodle Soup or a simple Roasted Tomato Soup — they are all favorites around our place!
The problem is, it’s pretty rare that I can find a soup that my kids will enjoy. But something hearty and creamy and loaded with chicken and rice like this one? It always goes down easy! Especially if you have 30 Minute Dinner Rolls or a chunk of crusty bread for dipping ;)
How Do You Make Chicken Soup With Rice From Scratch?
How do you make healthy chicken rice soup from scratch you wonder? This creamy chicken and rice soup is so easy to make. Just stir together, cover, and simmer until the vegetables and the rice are tender. While I love chicken wild rice soup too, I like to use brown rice in this easy chicken and rice soup recipe. Brown rice packs a bit more fiber than white, and it’s not quite as labor intensive as wild rice. I think it’s the best of both worlds!
Can I Freeze Chicken Rice Soup?
Homemade Chicken Rice Soup freezes perfectly if you follow a few important steps.
Low-fat milk does not freeze well and will separate. Regular evaporated milk would fare better over low fat or skim evaporated milk in this creamy chicken rice soup recipe. If you know you plan to freeze, for an even better result, I recommend using whole milk or even cream as the higher fat content does better when frozen and thawed.
Cool to room temperature, then place in a large freezer bag, seal completely, and lay flat to freeze in a thin layer. This will help the soup to thaw quickly when you need it for dinner!
To thaw, you can submerge the bag in lukewarm water until thawed, then reheat to the desired temperature in the microwave or on the stovetop.
More Chicken Soup Recipes You’ll Love
- Slow Cooker Chicken Tortilla Soup – a family favorite
- Chicken Wild Rice Soup
- Slow Cooker Chicken Pot Pie Soup – set it and forget it!
- Easy Chicken Taco Soup – simple and satisfying
- Chicken Barley Soup – an old fave!!
Can I Use Leftover Cooked Chicken?
You can definitely use leftover cooked chicken in this chicken soup recipe. Simply swap it for the fresh chicken breasts and away you go!
Can I Use Leftover Cooked Rice?
You can also use leftover cooked rice to make chicken rice soup if you’re looking to clean out the fridge.
You will simply continue with the recipe as written but leave out the rice. Then, at the end when you are thickening the soup, stir in your precooked rice and it will be warmed through in no time.
Chicken Rice Soup
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon oil
- 1 onion minced
- 3 large carrots peeled and diced
- 1 stalk celery diced
- 1 teaspoon garlic minced
- 1 teaspoon dried parsley
- ½ teaspoon dried thyme
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ⅛ teaspoon black pepper
- 5 cups low sodium chicken broth
- 2 chicken breasts uncooked
- 1 cup brown rice
- 1 cup evaporated milk
Instructions
- In a large soup pot, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add onion, carrots and celery and cook and stir for 3-4 minutes, until onion begins to turn golden.
- Add garlic, parsley and thyme and cook 1 minute.
- Add salt and pepper, broth, chicken. Add rice. Stir and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.
- Reduce heat to medium-low (a simmer), cover, and cook for 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes, or until vegetables and rice are tender.
- Remove chicken from pot and shred. Add back to the pot with evaporated milk.
- Serve.
Nutrition Information
Nutrition information provided is an estimate and will vary based on cooking methods and brands of ingredients used.
Course Soup
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This is a new family favorite! Is easy, And so delicious. It keeps great for leftovers too. We use boneless thighs sometimes which seems to be tastier. We also use whatever type of rice we have (excited minute rice)
Hello. I made your chicken rice soup today for the first time and it was very tasty indeed. However, I have a few queries. When adding the evaporated milk do I add it straight from the can or do I need to rehydrate it? My soup looked so much milkier than yours and I wondered if I was supposed to add water first to the evaporated milk to dilute? Also, I realise evaporated milk isn’t recommended for freezing so much but is it fine to chill and reheat another day? Very many thanks x
Hi Amy, we add the evaporated milk straight from the can but make sure you are only adding one cup. It is definitely fine to chill and reheat another day!
Very good! Followed the recipe MOSTLY, except I didn’t have evaporated milk, so I used whole milk and 2 TBL of cream (that’s all I had). I added more broth, as the rice soaked it up! Definitely will make this again. Oh – I also used leftover Rotisserie chicken which I added when I added the milk. Very tasty!
Delish soup only change I added about two tbs of finely diced ginger and three more cloves of garlic. So good!!
I love this recipe. If you eat right away thickness is fine. Lots of great
flavor. However if you make ahead cut back on the rice by 1/4 c. The
soup with really thicken. Another option is to add however much
broth you need but you will have to also add more salt, pepper and
thyme. My reheated soup required 2-3 cups of broth. I recommend
decreasing the rice unless you are using pre-cooked rice.
Delicious.
Thank you for sharing your tips, Sally!
So good! Added a little more broth because it was a bit thick, but otherwise wonderful!
The taste was fine, but the recipe could be improved by using measurements for the vegetables – I’d rather know how many cups of carrots, celery, or onions I need given how different in size nature makes them. Also, 6 cups of liquid wasn’t enough. Recommend adding 1-2 more, it was more stew like.
This recipe works if the veggies are large or small, no need to cut an extra ½ onion or carrot to make a measurement so we leave it as whole vegetables.
This is the second time I have made this recipe and it’s a hit again.
I used turkey instead of chicken. Yum.
I made this soup last night, it was very good and flavorful! Mine did turn out very thick, not soup like, maybe next time I’ll add more broth.
I made this today with a few substitutions.
Used what we had in hands including white rice, heavy cream, and the vegetable better than bouillon instead of cooking stock. Just wow. Had family come BACK over and said they were dreaming about the soup so they had to come back. 10/10
Wow! I’m so happy to hear your family loved this recipe!
This is the only chicken and rice soup recipe I use. I make it exactly as stated.
It’s wonderful , I’ve been making this for 4+ years. Thank you
Great recipe! Thanks.
Can one use white rice if no brown rice???
Yes Kathy, you can use white rice if you don’t have brown. Please let us know how it turns out!
This soup is good and easy to make! However I noticed a few things. With only 5 cups of chicken broth it’s basically a stew. I added a few cups more. I don’t feel like the evaporated milk did anything, next time I probably won’t add it. Not that it matters, but with the milk it doesn’t look like the pictures. Not nearly enough rice and maybe too much chicken! Next time I’ll add another cup of rice.
I made the recipe verbatim. All in all, the flavor was a little basic, but my family loved it. Will be making again at wife’s request.
This is our tried and true recipe for chicken and rice soup. Love that the brown rice doesn’t get mushy. I wish I could give it 10 stars. This time we added fresh lemon juice for something different and it was delicious too. Love that it is basic ingredients. My son is gluten free and paleo and he loves this soup. Something that we can all eat together.
Do you use instant rice or long grain rice?
Hi Sage, we use long grain rice for this recipe.
First time trying this recipe (even though I made alterations to it) and it was so delicious! I had rotisserie chicken bones with a bit of meat left on it in the freezer, so I made my own broth (5c). I didn’t have chicken breasts, so I used 4 small boneless thighs instead. I added 3cups of chicken broth and 1/2 cup pearled barley to the pot before it was simmering. At the end, I added 1 cup of frozen chopped kale pieces. I used the entire can of evaporated milk so I didn’t waste the extra 100ml. It was so delicious! I loved the fact your recipe was so easy to follow and I could add extra favourite ingredients to it. I made sure to share your recipe! Thanks so much!