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Healthy Chicken and Vegetable Soup

A clear, comforting chicken soup with tender shredded chicken thighs, carrots, celery, potato, peas and spinach. Everything cooks in one pot in just over an hour, and each bowl has 33g of protein.

Lunch

65

Serves 4

A bowl of clear chicken and vegetable soup with shredded chicken, carrots, celery, potato, peas and parsley

Ingredients

  • 500g/1lb 2oz skinless, boneless chicken thighs, trimmed of visible fat
  • 1 tbsp (15ml) olive oil
  • 1 large onion (about 150g/5oz), finely chopped
  • 2 medium carrots (about 150g/5oz), diced
  • 2 sticks celery (about 100g/3½oz), diced
  • 2 cloves garlic (about 8g), crushed
  • 1 tsp dried thyme and 1 bay leaf
  • 1 medium waxy potato (about 250g/9oz), peeled and cut into 1.5cm/½in cubes
  • 1.5 litres/6 cups hot low-salt chicken stock (check it is gluten-free if you need it to be)
  • 100g/3½oz/⅔ cup frozen peas
  • 80g/3oz baby spinach
  • 15g/a loosely packed ¾ cup fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
  • 1 tbsp (15ml) lemon juice
  • Salt and black pepper, to taste

Method

  1. Heat the oil in a large, heavy pan (at least 4 litres/4 quarts) over a medium heat. Add the onion, carrots and celery and cook gently for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring now and then, until the onion is soft and translucent.
  2. Add the garlic and thyme and stir for 1 minute.
  3. Pour in the stock, add the bay leaf, potato and whole chicken thighs, and bring to the boil. Turn the heat down, cover with a lid slightly ajar and simmer gently for 25 minutes, until the potato is tender and the chicken is cooked through, with no pink in the middle. If you have a thermometer, the thickest thigh should reach 75C/167F.
  4. Lift out the chicken onto a board and shred it with two forks. Remove the bay leaf.
  5. Return the chicken to the pan with the peas and simmer for 3 minutes, then stir in the spinach until it wilts, about 1 minute.
  6. Take off the heat and stir in the parsley and lemon juice. Taste, and add salt and pepper only if needed; stock is already salty.
  7. The soup keeps in the fridge for up to 2 days, or freezes for up to 3 months. Reheat until piping hot all the way through.

Why it works

A bowl has about 33g of protein and 317 calories, with five different vegetables. It is a complete meal in one bowl rather than a starter, which is why it uses a generous 125g of chicken a serving.

Why thighs, not breast. Chicken thighs stay juicy and tender after simmering, while breast meat tends to turn dry and stringy in soup. Skinless thighs with the visible fat trimmed are still lean.

The vegetables. Onion, carrots and celery cooked slowly at the start give the soup its depth of flavour. Peas and spinach go in at the end so they stay green, and a squeeze of lemon brightens the whole pot.

Salt. Most of the salt in soup comes from the stock. Use a low-salt stock and season only at the end. That helps keep within the UK guideline of no more than 6g of salt a day for adults, and the US limit of 2,300mg of sodium.

With about 21g of carbohydrate, mostly from the potato, it is not tagged for blood sugar; leave out the potato and add more vegetables if that matters to you. For another one-pot chicken dish, try the chicken, butter bean and kale one-pot, or for a vegetarian soup, the minestrone with cannellini beans.