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This delicious Lemon Chicken and Rice Soup is hearty, filling, and can be put together in less than 15 minutes with a few shortcuts.
If you love chicken and rice soup, you should also check out my chicken wild rice soup recipe.
Who doesn’t love the idea of dinner in fifteen minutes or less?! With today’s lemon chicken and reice soup recipe you can do just that. The first trick is using leftover chicken or rotisserie chicken. The chicken is already cooked and ready to pop into the soup. And the second trick is using instant rice like Minute Rice.
We are big rice fans at our house and it is actually one of my favorite things to add into soup. I like to cook the rice before putting it in the soup. This keeps it from absorbing too much of the broth. And I like to use chicken stock instead of water to give it some more flavor.
Easy Chicken and Rice Soup
While the rice is cooking, I get the rest of the soup together. I cook the onion and garlic in some olive oil for about 3-4 minutes. Then I add in the chicken broth, cooked chicken, lemon zest and crushed red pepper flakes. Bring it to a boil and let it all simmer for about 5 minutes. Finally, add the rice and dinner is ready!
I love to top my lemon chicken and rice soup with freshly grated Parmesan cheese. Lemon and Parmesan complement each other nicely. And cheese just makes everything more delicious.
Lemon Chicken and Rice Soup
Ingredients
- 10 C chicken broth
- 2 Tbsp olive oil
- 3 tsp garlic minced
- 1 onion diced
- 1 lemon zested
- 2-3 C cooked shredded chicken
- 1 C Minute® White Rice
- 1 C water or chicken broth
- 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
- 1/3 C Parmesan cheese shredded
- 1/4 C chives chopped
Instructions
- Bring 1 C water or chicken broth to a boil. Add in 1 C rice, cover and turn off heat and allow to sit for 5 minutes. Fluff with fork.
- Put olive oil into a pan and cook onion and garlic until onion softens.
- Combine chicken broth, diced chicken, lemon zest, onion mixture and crushed red pepper into pot.
- Bring to a boil and simmer for 5 minutes.
- Add in cooked rice.
- Top with parmesan cheese and chives.
- Salt and pepper to taste
Nutrition Facts:
Jeannie Brooks says
I love making my home made chicken and rice soup with celery seasoning and lemon juice. Especially when you have a cold. It smells good taste good and makes you feel better.
Annalea says
Wow . . . this looks really, really good. But honestly, the real hook here are those adorable bowls. lol Where did you get them?
Leigh Anne says
The bowls are my favorite too! They are the Latte Bowl from Anthropologie – fairly reasonably priced!!
Rachel Jensen says
I ALWAYS have leftover rice!! I am going to try this recipe for sure!
P.S.- I LOVE that you’ve added the ability to easily “print” your recipes, especially when they include a photo. THANK YOU!
Ivonne Loving says
Hi! I included this post in this weeks from my reader round-up. Loved the post and thought it would be super useful to my friends and readers.
Mary Kathryn says
We are in Southern Utah and thankfully don’t need soup anymore but sometimes you do just need a good soup. Crank the air on and turn on the fans and enjoy some soup. We loved the last one we tried from you and this one looks yummy too.
Emmy says
Your pictures are so pretty. I love the stack of green bowls. Thanks for sharing the recipe. I look forward to the roll recipe.
Melinda says
I am a sucker for soup. Love them! Especially chicken soups. I have 23 recipes in that category. I’ve never seen a chicken soup recipe that included lemon in it before, though. I’m going to try it!
Karen says
Love getting different soup recipes and they are so quick and easy. It’s also such an easy left over to heat up and I like having that option. And needless to say, with all this cold and rain it’s a great choice.
Leigh Anne says
You would think that by April we wouldn’t be needing soup to warm us up but alas , we do! Enjoy the recipe!
Jeanine says
OOPs too many stills. My hands have not unthawed yet. BURR!
Jeanine says
This looks so great. Since it still feels like still winter here in Utah, this will warm us from head to toe. Thanks for sharing.