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This easy Chicken Mushroom Soup is a 30 minute meal perfect for dinner! It’s a creamy soup that’s lower in fat and full of flavor.
One of my favorite things about winter is that it’s soup weather. We love making soup at least once a week for dinner, but here in California our soup season is short: by April it’s getting too warm to make soup on a regular basis. Luckily for me the internet doesn’t just live in California: most of you reading this will get snow through spring break!
I love making homemade soup that is full of flavor but doesn’t take all day. I’m a 30 minute meal girl at heart so if I can make a soup in 30 minutes that’s so good you won’t miss spending all day making it, then I know I have a good recipe on my hands.
This easy Chicken Mushroom Soup is a creamy 30 minute meal that I threw together with what I had in my refrigerator. It’s that simple to make!
The best part about this soup is it’s great for leftovers: I made some of my oven baked chicken and had a couple of breasts left over that went into this soup. Using leftover chicken makes it easy, extra flavorful, and come together in minutes.
I’m not a huge fan of basic chicken soup, so jazzing it up with mushrooms and cream is perfect for me. In fact, if I could have creamy clam chowder or rich soups like that every day in winter I’d be a happy girl. However, no one can eat that way all the time – especially when summer bodies are made in winter. I managed to make this creamy chicken mushroom soup without cream and it still tasted amazing.
Soup, for me, is all about depth of flavor. Each layer of the soup from start to finish needs good seasoning so that, all together, the flavors work.
This healthier chicken and mushroom soup has a few lower-calorie swaps:
- I didn’t use rice or noodles. Instead, I just added one potato for a bit of starch but without all the calories from rice.
- Instead of heavy cream, I used half and half. It’s not thick like a chowder, but the flavor is all there.
Now, when you’re making soup in 30 minutes you have to maximize your flavor profiles so that it doesn’t taste bland. Here are my secrets to the most flavorful soup:
- Use chicken stock if you can find it. Broth is okay, but I prefer stock for it’s deeper flavor. And quality matters: even if you’re using broth spring for one that’s a bit more expensive. I absolutely love Trader Joe’s or Kitchen Basics low-sodium.
- Don’t skimp on seasonings: season every layer from the vegetables to the broth.
- Start every soup with a mixture of onion, celery, carrot, and garlic. I love the flavors that fresh ingredients give.
How do you make a delicious chicken soup in 30 minutes? By starting with pre-cooked chicken. I love making a batch of oven baked chicken or grilled chicken on the weekends and using it all week in salads and soups. It’s so much easier to chop or shred cooked chicken and throw it in a soup, and I think it adds more flavor too. (You could also start with a rotisserie chicken for this!)
Now, if you’re starting with raw chicken, check the notes section of the recipe. I give instructions for starting from scratch there!
Let’s not forget about the mushrooms! I absolutely love the flavor of cooked mushrooms and they add a great texture to the soup as well. Chicken and mushrooms go really well together (it’s one of my favorite combos as you might have noticed from all my chicken and mushroom recipes!)
This easy 30 minute Chicken Mushroom Soup is the perfect winter meal, cozy and warm and a little bit on the healthier side too!
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30 Minute Chicken and Mushroom Soup
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 medium yellow onion diced
- 1 stalk celery diced
- 1 medim carrot diced
- 1 medium russet potato diced
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon ground pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon oregano
- 1/2 teaspoon thyme
- 2 cloves garlic minced
- 8 ounces sliced white mushrooms
- 1 bay leaf
- 4 cups 32 ounces low-sodium chicken stock
- 8 ounces cooked chicken breast diced or shredded
- 1/2 cup half & half
Instructions
- Heat oil over medium high heat in a large pot or dutch oven.
- Add onion, celery, carrot, potato to the pan, then sprinkle with the salt, pepper, oregano and thyme. Stir to coat. Cook about 5 minutes, stirring often. Add the garlic, stir, and cook one minute more.
- Add the mushrooms to the pot and stir, cook for 2 minutes.
- Add the bay leaf and chicken stock to the pot. Stir and cover; bring to a boil and cook until the potatoes are cooked through (about 5-10 minutes).
- Once the potatoes are fork tender, add the chicken and half and half to the pot. Stir and cook, until the soup is hot once more.
- Serve hot with a garnish of parsley.
Recipe Notes
Recipe Nutrition
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Last Updated on February 12, 2019
This is a really good soup . I only had store bought mushrooms but I had a carton of mushroom stock and I had some chicken stock so I added some chicken also . I will be making it again. I also added some marjarom . Yummy!!
This looks so good, but I am vegetarian and wondering if it will still be good without chicken? I love mushrooms so a creamy mushroom soup with veggies sounds perfect. I have mushroom stock and find that veggie stock can be bland. Do you think veggie modifications could still taste good with this recipe? Thanks!
Love the recipes for the soups . My favourite food
Fabulous food… Yummy Soups!!!❤️
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