Chicken and Cabbage Soup

Anyway, I wanted to post my base chicken cabbage soup recipe ASAP, while it’s still soup season.

I don’t know about you, but I tend to reserve the hearty soup recipes for the times of year when I DON’T have to blast the air conditioning to survive... and that season is coming right at us!

Anyway.

This delicious soup recipe is one of my favourite healthy recipes that can just be thrown together in no time.

It’s great for meal prep, and it’s a great way to clear out your fridge. While I listed specific ingredients for nutrition analysis purposes, it’s HIGHLY customizable!

Also, while this particular version is gluten free and keto friendly (236 calories, 11 grams total carbs, 2 grams fiber - so 9 grams net carbs - and 24 grams of protein!), you don’t need to be on a special diet to enjoy it.

It’s just a good base soup recipe that the whole family will be able to enjoy. Hearty, filling, and tasty!

Let’s get to it!

Ingredients

This recipe uses really simple ingredients - you’ll be able to find everything you need in pretty much any grocery store!

A few notes for you:

Cooked Chicken

There’s a lot of room to play with this ingredients - I kept it relatively ambiguous, so you can use whatever is time saving, tasty, and available to you.

Personally, I like to buy a rotisserie chicken. It’s only like $2 more than raw, comes as flavourful, juicy chicken, and all I have to do is pull the meat off and cut it into small pieces.

A great option when you’re looking to save time and effort!

Another low effort option is to make my Dutch Oven Pulled Chicken.

I tend to make this shredded chicken with any extra chicken breasts I have around (and you can do it right from frozen!), because I like to use lean meat.

That said, you can really use whatever chicken pieces you like. Sometimes we’ll toss some frozen chicken thighs in with the breast meat, it’s all good.

Chicken Stock

Here’s another ingredient where you can use whatever you like.

If I have homemade stock on hand, I’ll use that - but usually I’ll use tetra packs of chicken bone broth.

Bone broth has cleaner ingredients and better nutrition than other types of packaged chicken broth or chicken stock - less sodium, usually, too! - and I find it has a more robust taste, as well.

That said, you can use whatever you like! I’ve even used vegetable broth and mushroom stock, in a pinch. (Separate occasions!)

Fresh Produce

This is a very vegetable-heavy soup, with cabbage, carrots, celery, onion, and fresh garlic cloves involved!

A few vegetable notes for you:

1. 4 cups of cabbage won’t need a whole head of cabbage, unless it’s a really small head cabbage.

I like to use the outermost leaves - the inner leaves are much thicker, and don’t cook down to “noodles” in the same way.

2. I call for 1 large carrot, but you can use 2 medium carrots instead.

3. I like to “Star Trek” the celery, into somewhat larger chunks than you normally see in soups. I like having the celery prominent! If you don’t, feel free to cut it into smaller pieces.

4. I’ll usually use yellow onion, but I’ve used red onion when I didn’t have yellow on hand. It’s all good.

Dry White Wine

I use a small amount of dry white wine to add a bit of complexity to the taste, and round out the flavour of the broth.

If you want to skip the wine, no problem - I do recommend adding a small splash of lemon juice, lime juice, or apple cider vinegar, though.

It’ll bring a bit of the brightness - acidity - that you’ll otherwise be missing if you cut the wine out.

Everything Else

Rounding out this recipe, you will need:

Olive Oil
Bay Leaves
Dried Thyme
Ground Black Pepper
Salt

... super basic, don’t really have anything to add as far as these last few ingredients go!

Variations

This is a SUPER basic cabbage chicken soup recipe, with a ton of room for variation.

While I had to do a set base version to be able to do nutritional information, we rarely make this soup exactly the same way - and you don’t need to, either.

A few ideas:

1 - For an Italian chicken cabbage soup, use some Italian seasoning and add some chopped up tomatoes. Garnish with Parmesan.

2 - If you have some fresh herbs on hand, feel free to add them!

Things like thyme, summer savory, rosemary, etc work well when added early on, and fresh parsley is always a nice addition when chopped up and added at the end.

3 - If you don’t care as much about the carb count, feel free to add some extra veggies. It’s a good base soup for using up whatever you have in the fridge.

Broccoli florets are great, and I would definitely be using some red bell pepper... if I could handle nightshades anymore!

4. If you want to have incorporate some Asian flavour in your soup, swap the olive oil out for sesame oil. Add a couple Tablespoons of soy sauce instead of the white wine, skip the thyme, toss some sliced green onions in there, and garnish with sriracha and sesame seeds!

How to Make Chicken & Cabbage Soup

The full recipe is in the printable recipe card at the end of this post, here is a visual walk through:

In a medium pot or Dutch oven, cook celery, carrot, onion, and garlic in the olive oil over medium-high heat until onion is tender and translucent, seasoning with a bit of salt and pepper as you go.

Pour in the chicken stock. Bring to a boil, then turn the burner down to medium-low heat and simmer for 10 minutes.

Remove the each bay leaf from the pot, discard. Season soup with salt and pepper, to taste.

Leftovers

Once cooled to almost room temperature, the soup can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days.

More Keto Soups & Stews

Looking for some more keto recipes for low carb soup and stew? I've got you...

Bacon Cheeseburger Soup
Beef Stew
Cabbage Roll Soup Mix
Chicken Pot Pie Soup
Clam Chowder
Creamy Taco Soup
Doro Wat
Easy Ramen
Egg Roll Soup Mix
Fennel Chicken Soup
Italian Wedding Soup
Loaded Pierogi Soup
One Pot Bacon Cheeseburger Soup
Steak and Kidney Stew

But wait, there's more! Keep an eye on my Keto Soups and Stews section for new recipes!