Leftover roast chicken, 40g of basmati and a big knob of ginger are what make this Hairy Bikers chicken soup different from a broth. And it feeds 4 at 306 calories a bowl, from Make It Easy, in 45 minutes.
Both books promise the spices and ginger give it a “lovely warming flavour”, and both sign off saying it “tastes epic”. So nothing simmers on the bone here, because the chicken is already cooked before it goes in.
The chicken goes in for the last 10 minutes only, because it is already cooked and any longer turns it stringy. And the sweet potato arrives at the same time, so it holds its shape instead of collapsing into the stock.
Hairy Bikers Chicken Soup Recipe
Description
Red onion and carrot take on a bit of colour before the rice, garlic, ginger and spices join them in the pan. Then stock goes in and everything simmers until the rice still has bite, which takes barely ten minutes. And sweet potato, shredded greens and the cooked meat finish it, with lemon juice squeezed over at the table.
Ingredients
For the soup
Instructions
- Colour the base: heat 2 tsp of olive oil in a large pan over a high heat. Then add 2 red onions in wedges and 2 large carrots in chunks, cooking a few minutes until they start to colour.
- Add the rice and spices: stir in 40g of rinsed basmati, 3 chopped garlic cloves and 30g of finely chopped ginger. Then add ¼ tsp each of turmeric and cinnamon, pour in 1 litre of chicken stock and season with salt and black pepper.
- Simmer to al dente: bring it to the boil, then turn the heat down and simmer for 10 to 12 minutes. And stop while the rice and carrots still have bite, because they carry on softening in the next stage.
- Add the chicken last: put in 1 large sweet potato in chunks, 200g of shredded chard or kale and 200g of leftover roast chicken. Then cover the pan and cook for another 10 minutes, until the sweet potato and greens are tender.
- Finish with lemon: taste for seasoning, then squeeze in lemon juice just before you serve it. And get it into bowls quickly, because the greens dull if the pan sits on the hob.
FAQs
Which of their chicken soups should I make?
They wrote at least seven, so it depends what you are after. Because Chicken & Egg alone holds a Thai one, a creamy blended chicken soup, a Portuguese canja and a Jewish one with matzo balls. So this chunky one is the everyday choice, while the old-fashioned carcass version is their chicken noodle soup.
Is there an easier or lighter version?
This is the easy one, and the same recipe appears in two different books. And Make It Easy prints the turmeric and cinnamon as optional, while the diabetes book makes them compulsory. And that book also drops the salt completely, so it is the lighter print of the very same soup.
Can I make it in a slow cooker?
No, and not because they never wrote one, but because this recipe actively resists it. And the rice wants 12 minutes while the already-cooked chicken wants 10, so hours on low would turn both to mush. So for slow cooking, start from something raw and slow by design like their scotch broth.
Is this the one on BBC Food?
No, and this trips a lot of people up. Because BBC Food hosts their chicken noodle soup and a fragrant version of it, but no plain chicken soup at all. So the easy chicken soup you may have seen there is BBC Good Food’s own, which is a different publisher entirely.
Why rice instead of noodles?
Because 40g of basmati does a different job from noodles, which is thickening the stock slightly as it releases starch. And it is the same trick as their mulligatawny, where long-grain rice and sweet potato carry a spiced broth. So if you would rather have neither, their chicken and vegetable soup thickens on potato instead.
