Chicken and Pumpkin Soup
This chicken and pumpkin soup is the perfect picture of what eating healthy in the fall should look like. Lean proteins, whole grains, and tons of veggies-this soup's got it all!
🔍 Recipe At-A-Glance: Chicken and Pumpkin Soup
- 🕰️ Prep Time: 30 minutes
- ⏰ Cook Time: 1 hour
- 🍁 Flavor Profile: Hearty, creamy, and oh-so-comforting.
- 💪🏻 Why It's Healthy: 25 grams of protein thanks to the chicken and quinoa, plus tons of veggies.
- ↪️ Make Ahead: This recipe makes a huge pot of soup, but no worries-the leftovers freeze great!
- 🧡 Difficulty: Not bad-there's just a lot of veggie chopping to do!
"Today my 4- and 6-year olds separately asked if there was any left that they could have. Now that's a telling sign of how good this was!"
- BEN -
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🧡 Why You'll Love This Recipe
Pumpkin is a great way to add a little bit of sweetness, heartiness, and autumn flavor to your favorite savory dishes (see my savory pumpkin hummus or pumpkin enchiladas) like this creamy, comforting Chicken and Pumpkin Soup.
Here's why you'll love this recipe:
- Nourishing: From a health standpoint, it doesn't get much better for you than a bowl of this pumpkin chicken soup. It's packed with lean protein thanks to the chicken and quinoa. It's loaded with healthy fiber, vitamins, and minerals. A big bunch of fresh spinach adds beautiful color and a ton of nutrition.
- Two-for-one ingredient: You'll start this soup off by boiling a whole chicken in water, just like in my white chicken chili. The chicken provides a one-two punch-both the meat and the broth for the soup come from this step!
- Family favorite: I've been making this soup for nearly a decade, and every fall, I am so pleased to be reminded just how good it is! I'm not sure I can put into words how obsessed I am with this soup with a couple of homemade drop biscuits.
🍲 The Ingredients You Need
- Whole chicken: This soup's broth is made using a whole chicken. It really is the best way to make sure you have an incredibly rich soup base. It sounds complicated and time-consuming to boil a whole chicken just for soup, but the time spent is mostly hands-off, and I promise, it's worth it. Make this soup on a weekend when it's cold and rainy and the leaves are tumbling down and you don't have anywhere to go or anything to do and you're staying in your yoga pants all day. Trust me.
- Quinoa: For a fun contrast of color, I used tri-color quinoa (I always buy Bob's Red Mill brand), but you can use either all white or all red quinoa if that's what you have kicking around. I haven't found much of a difference in flavor between the different colors of quinoa, but it's fun to mix up the color sometimes!
- Pie pumpkin: Make sure to grab a pie pumpkin for this recipe instead of a big ole carving pumpkin. Pie pumpkins have tons of flavor and a good texture for cooking. Plus, you can still save the seeds to roast homemade pumpkin seeds just like the big jack-o-lantern pumpkins!
Make sure to check the recipe card below for the full ingredients list, along with quantities and my expert tips and tricks.
🔁 Variations & Substitutions
- Mix up the squash: If you've used up all your pie pumpkins on other savory pumpkin recipes, feel free to swap in butternut, acorn, Hubbard, or other winter squash. If they're good for cooking, they will work in this soup!
- Turkey and pumpkin soup: Drowning in leftover turkey from Thanksgiving? Swap in leftover shredded turkey + turkey or chicken stock for this soup.
- Rotisserie chicken: Need a quicker meal for a busy weeknight? This is one of my favorite uses for rotisserie chicken! Shred one up and use frozen homemade bone broth or store-bought stock in place of the water.
🥣 How to Make Chicken and Pumpkin Soup
Step 1: Boil the chicken in plain water. It should only take about half an hour, and this single step provides the cooked chicken and the broth! You'll know it is done when the chicken is practically falling off the bone.
Step 2: Remove the chicken from the pot. When it is cool enough to handle, remove the meat from the bones and shred. Save the bones for making homemade bone broth!
Step 3: Add the chopped pumpkin, onion, quinoa, celery, carrots, garlic, bay leaves, thyme, and sage to the stock and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer for 20-25 minutes-you'll know it is ready when the pumpkin is tender.
Step 4: Stir in the chicken, spinach, half and half, and pumpkin puree. Simmer for another 5-7 minutes, or until everything is heated through.
🙋🏻♀️ Chicken and Pumpkin Soup FAQs
Listen, I love a savory use of pumpkin, and this soup is no exception! The chicken has a mild enough flavor that it doesn't overpower the pumpkin and spinach, but can still stand up to all the herbs. Everybody gets a chance to shine in this soup!
I've never met a bowl of soup that can't be improved by a big hunk of bread (even this pumpkin chicken soup), so serve it up with roasted garlic bread, quick gluten-free bread, easy drop biscuits, or even this simple Irish soda bread recipe.
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👩🏻🍳 My Expert Tips & Tricks
- Whole chicken is queen: This whole chicken serves double-duty as the meat + the stock. This one ingredient gives the soup so much flavor!
- Stick with the little pumpkins: Skip the jack-o-lantern pumpkins...they aren't as flavorful and are more stringy than the little pie pumpkins.
- Party-sized: This recipe makes a big 'ole pot of soup, making it perfect for serving a crowd. No crowd to feed? The leftovers also freeze great!
🎃 More Savory Pumpkin Recipes
If you tried this chicken and pumpkin soup or any other recipe on my blog, please leave a 🌟 star rating and let me know how it went in the comments!
📖 Recipe
Chicken and Pumpkin Soup
Ingredients
- 1 whole chicken
- 12 cups water
- 1 medium pie pumpkin peeled, seeds removed, and cut into bite-sized chunks
- 1 onion diced
- 1 cup quinoa
- 3 stalks celery diced
- 2 carrots diced
- 4 cloves garlic minced
- 2 bay leaves
- 2 teaspoons dried thyme
- 1 teaspoon dried sage
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 2 cups spinach
- 1 ½ cups half and half
- 1 cup pumpkin puree
Instructions
- Place the chicken in a large Dutch oven or soup pot, cover with water, bring to a boil over medium-high heat, and boil until chicken is cooked through, about 25 minutes.
- Remove chicken from the water, and let cool to touch. Once cool, remove meat from the bones and shred.
- Meanwhile, add the pumpkin, onion, quinoa, celery, carrots, garlic, bay leaves, thyme, and sage to the stockpot and bring back to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat and simmer until the pumpkin is tender, about 20 -25 minutes.
- Add the chicken, spinach, half and half, and pumpkin puree to the soup, simmering until everything is heated through, about 5 -7 minutes.
Notes
- The little pie pumpkins will make a much tastier soup than the big ones you get for carving. If you don't have one, try butternut squash, acorn squash, or any other winter squash that is good for eating.
- This makes a very large pot of soup, but leftovers freeze well. Freeze in 1-2 serving portions for easy dinners down the line.
Soup is one of my favorite ways to eat winter squash when it isn't in puree form—and this pumpkin chicken soup is no exception! Boiling the whole chicken makes it so easy, and this soup was a great way to use up a bunch of my CSA veggies!
HEY Y'ALL Grandma here - my niece would go "yewh!" to this, BUT: to have the chicken cooked in less time and use less water covering it during cooking, thereby NOT DILUTING your chowder, THE ANSWER IS SIMPLE: cut up your whole chicken! The water doesn't circulate around, especially inside a whole bird as fast, slows the cooking down. It only takes a couple minutes, and y'all should be cleaning that bird anyway!
Cleaning a whole chicken: not all butchers are equal, so check your bird. During and since COVID 19, I have seen a slew of poorly butchered birds. Using a sharp paring knife, scrape over the skin looking for pin feather bits and loose yellow skin, rinsing the bird as needed. Pin feathers taste YUCK if cooked. (I find them mostly on ends of drumsticks and under the wings, LOL, wing tips) Rinse the inside bird and remove (pinch out) those little glands (if butcher didn't) that look like little cream colored jelly belly jellybeans - those will taste bitter. All this should take not more than minutes to do.
Cutting a whole chicken, easy peasy: take kitchen shears, cleaver or very sharp boning knife and cut along left or right side of the spine from top to bottom. Use your fingers to poke and find your way around the big bones before starting to cut, then cut through the small ones with the shears. [now you can see the bird's "poop shoot" and clean it out by pushing a fingertip down it's length, rinsing the area afterwards. No, the butchers don't do it for you.]
Open chicken up and lay out flat as much as possible. Leg quarters become obvious, cut where they flop, narrower zones - these will disjoint from the torso with a twist, so a quick cut is all you need to remove them. You can leave breast spread and in the bottom of the pot, or lean your weight fully on the breast bone with your palms flat and together, to crack and flatten the bone, then cut as you need to for size of your pot. Now the bird sits in the pot at half the height is was = less water to cover! Deboning the meat will be easier as lifting a whole bird from scalding water is tricky.
I tell my niece, who won't touch raw meat and will never be a vegan: if you're going to eat an animal, show respect for it by preparing it right. And wash your hands often.