The Easiest Chicken Soup When You're Not Feeling Your Best

Soup

• 400–450 g chicken breast
• 1 liter water
• 1 chicken bouillon cube
• 1 tbsp chicken stock
• 1 yellow onion
• 3 small carrots
• 2 small stalks celery
• 1 small leek
• 2 cloves garlic
• A little butter for sautéing the onion

Bouquet garni

• Leaves from the celery
• 2 dark green leaves from the leek
• Fresh thyme
• 1 bay leaf
• A little carrot tops, if the carrots have them
• Cotton twine

Finally

• About 1 tbsp butter
• Lemon, to taste
• Salt, cautiously to taste
• Coarsely ground or freshly ground black pepper

Mise en place

• Cut the celery into cubes and save the leaves for the bouquet garni.
• Rinse the leek well, especially between the layers, and slice the light part. Save some dark green leaves.
• Slice the carrots into not-too-thin pieces so they retain some bite.
• Cut the onion into coarse pieces.
• Lightly crush the garlic cloves.
• Cut the lemon in half.
• Tie together the celery leaves, dark green leek leaves, thyme, and optionally carrot tops into a bouquet garni. Also include the bay leaf.
• Cut the chicken breast into bite-sized pieces.

Broth and Vegetables

1. Melt a small knob of butter in a pot.
2. Sauté the onion for about 2–3 minutes until it becomes translucent. It should not color.
3. Add 1 liter of water, chicken bouillon, and 1 tbsp chicken stock.
4. Add the celery, garlic, and bouquet garni.
5. Bring to a boil and let simmer for about 15 minutes.

Chicken and Finished Soup

1. Add the chicken pieces and carrots.
2. Let simmer for about 8–10 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through.
3. Remove the bouquet garni and bay leaf.
4. Add the leek and let the soup simmer for another 2–3 minutes.
5. Adjust the flavor with a little lemon juice.
6. Add salt very cautiously, as both the bouillon and stock are already salty.
7. Add plenty of coarsely ground or freshly ground black pepper to taste.
8. Stir in about 1 tbsp of butter right at the end.

Flavor Profile

Warm and hearty chicken soup with a distinct chicken flavor, sweetness from the vegetables, herbal notes from the bouquet garni, and freshness from the lemon. The butter at the end adds a bit more roundness and depth to the broth.

Serving Suggestions

Serve the soup piping hot as it is. Flatbread or white bread with butter can be served alongside if you want something extra.

Some recipes come about because one wants to try a new technique. Others start with an ingredient one happens to have in the fridge. This one started with a message from a viewer.

She mentioned that she was feeling a bit under the weather and wanted chicken soup. That was essentially the entire request. And perhaps that’s exactly why this recipe works so well. The goal is not to make the most advanced chicken soup, but to create something warm, good, and manageable on a day when energy might not be at its peak.

A Soup with a Shortcut

Instead of starting with a whole chicken and simmering broth for several hours, I use one liter of water, a chicken bouillon cube, and a tablespoon of chicken stock. That’s the conscious shortcut in the recipe. The bouillon and stock provide a good base, while the vegetables and herbs build on the flavor as the soup simmers.

This also means one must be careful with the salt. Both the bouillon and stock already contain a lot of salt, so I wait to add extra salt until the very end. This makes it easier to taste as you go rather than ending up with a broth that is too salty.

The Vegetables Do Much of the Work

The soup uses onion, carrot, celery, leek, and garlic. The celery is worth including even if you’re not particularly fond of the taste of raw celery. When it simmers with the other vegetables, it becomes part of the base flavor of the broth instead of tasting distinctly of celery.

The carrots are not sliced too thinly. The idea is for them to retain some bite when the soup is finished. The chicken becomes tender when poached in the broth, so a bit of structure in the carrot makes the whole soup more interesting to eat.

The leek is rinsed well before being cut. It’s easy for some sand to get stuck between the layers, and sand in the soup is an unpleasant surprise. The light part goes into the soup towards the end, while some of the dark green leaves are used in the bouquet garni.

Bouquet Garni, the Soup's Tea Bag

A small detail in this video is the bouquet garni. It’s simply a small bundle of aromatic herbs and green plant parts that are tied together and allowed to steep in the broth before the whole bundle is removed again.

Here I use leaves from the celery, dark green leaves from the leek, fresh thyme, and a bay leaf. If the carrots still have their greens on top, a bit of that can also be used. It’s a nice way to extract flavor from parts of the ingredients that would otherwise easily end up in the trash.

This is the first time I make bouquet garni in the video, and the process is not exactly surgically precise. But that’s also part of the point. This should be food that you can actually make at home, not a demonstration in a French restaurant kitchen.

Chicken Breast This Time

I had actually wanted to use chicken thigh fillet because it often stays juicy and has a lot of flavor, but the store didn’t have what I was looking for. So, it ended up being regular chicken breast in this soup. About 400–450 grams is just right for two servings.

The chicken is cut into bite-sized pieces and goes into the pot with the carrots after the broth has simmered with the vegetables and bouquet garni. After about 8–10 minutes, the chicken should be cooked through. Then the bouquet garni is removed, and the leek gets just a couple of minutes in the hot broth.

Lemon and Butter Right at the End

When everything is cooked, the soup is adjusted with lemon, pepper, and possibly a little salt. The lemon adds freshness and lifts the otherwise quite round flavor. Finally, about a tablespoon of butter is stirred into the broth. This adds a bit more richness and depth without making the soup heavy.

I serve it simply as it is. If you want something on the side, both flatbread and white bread with butter go well.

This is not a miracle cure and doesn’t try to be one. It’s just a simple, warm chicken soup made for those days when getting started in the kitchen can feel like the biggest task. Once you’re underway, the rest is quite straightforward.