Happy New Year, everyone!! This Chicken Soup with Quinoa, Sweet Potatoes, and Greens is warm, cozy, delicious, and packs a huge nutritional punch. It’s gluten free, freezable, and inexpensive to make, and it only takes about 30 minutes to throw together! It’s a great way to start your new year off, whether you’re trying to eat healthier, save money, cook more easy meals at home, or meal prep with the freezer.
I love the feeling of a new year and the fresh start. As much as I love Christmas decorations, I love that clean feeling your house has when you take them down. And I love making healthy food to start the New Year off right.
I’m especially excited to have a nice clean house and half of this soup still in my freezer because our little girl will be arriving any day now! I’m due two weeks from today. I can’t WAIT to see her little face and meet her. From what I can tell, she loves to eat (and kicks, HARD, every time I eat something particularly tasty), so I think she’ll fit right in to our little family. And yes, she kicked a lot when we had this soup :-)
Another great thing about this soup is how flexible it is.
Truthfully, I made this soup with leftover turkey from the holidays, and homemade turkey stock. I called it chicken soup because it’s not every day you have cooked turkey meat lying around, but you can use either. When I need cooked chicken for recipes for the week, I usually throw a whole chicken in my slow cooker with some water, salt and pepper, and onion, celery, and carrot scraps. This cooks the meat AND makes stock. You can even reuse the carcass to make MORE stock! You can also use rotisserie chicken meat (or any other cooked chicken meat) and store-bought broth for this if you want.
You can use whatever greens you want- baby spinach is probably the easiest to throw in, but I used beet greens. Kale, chard, or even arugula would work as well.
Not a fan of quinoa? Use rice or barley instead.
Two recommendations:
- Before adding the quinoa to the soup, give it a rinse in a mesh colander. I used to skip this and always found it to be a little bitter, but if you rinse it, it washes away a lot of the bitterness.
- Don’t bother peeling the sweet potatoes or carrots. Just give them a good scrub with a vegetable brush– you’ll save time AND get a boost of extra fiber and nutrients from the skin.
Recipe for Chicken Soup with Quinoa, Sweet Potatoes, and Greens below!
Chicken Soup with Quinoa, Sweet Potatoes, and Greens
Equipment
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1 onion diced
- 2 ribs celery diced
- 1 large carrot diced
- 1 small sweet potato diced
- 1 cup quinoa rinsed
- kosher salt to taste
- black pepper to taste
- 8 cups chicken stock/broth
- 2 cups cooked chicken diced or shredded, such as rotisserie (see notes for raw)
- 2 cups packed greens (spinach, beet greens, kale, chard, etc.) roughly chopped
Instructions
- In a large pot, the saute onion, celery, carrot, and sweet potato in butter (2 tablespoons) until softened (about 2 minutes).
- Add the quinoa (1 cup), stir to coat.
- Season with salt and pepper.
- Add the stock (8 cups), bring to a boil, and simmer for 20 minutes (or until quinoa is cooked).
- Stir in the chicken and greens, and continue heating until chicken is heated through and greens are wilted (about 5 minutes)
Notes
- Freeze in an airtight container for up to 6 months.
- If using raw chicken, cut it into small pieces, about 1/2" big, and add when you add the quinoa. It will poach as the soup simmers.
- The provided nutrition information does not include any added sodium from seasoning to taste, any optional ingredients, and it does not take brands into account. Feel free to calculate it yourself using this calculator or by adding the recipe to Yummly.
Nutrition
Nutrition Information Disclaimer
The provided nutrition information is my best estimate and reflects one serving of the recipe (total servings indicated at top of recipe card). It does not include any added sodium from seasoning to taste, any optional ingredients, and it does not take brands into account. I use an automatic API to calculate this information. Feel free to calculate it yourself using one of these tools:
Carolina
Delicious soup and I loved the idea of the quinoa instead of rice or pasta. I used arugula and it was delicious. Thanks for sharing!
Elizabeth Lindemann
So glad you liked it!
Daniel
This looks awesome! Any idea how I would do this in the instant pot? No worries if not, it seems quick and simple enough on the stovetop. Thanks for putting this together!
Elizabeth Lindemann
Quinoa takes almost no time at all to cook in an instant pot! You can sauté the veggies, add the broth and quinoa as directed, and then cook on manual, high for 1 minute, and that should do it. Then, add the chicken and greens in. However, it may take a while to come up to pressure- so I’m not sure how much time you’d save overall rather than doing it on the stovetop. Hope that helps!
Lorna
So good! I cut down on the butter and used a little olive oil as well. Best new recipe I’ve tried in a while.
Elizabeth Lindemann
So glad you liked it!