Lisa’s Healthy Kitchen: Italian Chicken Quinoa Soup Recipe

It’s soup time in our house. Last weekend I had 3 crockpots bubbling away with their hearty goodness! Dan’s must-have staple of turkey chili in one, Anna’s favorite tortilla soup (from the Vitamix cookbook), and my new favorite, Italian chicken quinoa soup in the other. I stumbled across the recipe during my Internet surfing adventures (was it Pinterest? All Recipes? Facebook? I don’t know!!) And just like everyone else, had to give it my own little spin. The original recipe is one of those put-it-all-in-the-pot-set-it-and-go recipes. I don’t usually like those because if I put in a whole chicken breast, I have to shred it after it’s cooked and really, who wants to do that? So I turned to my absolute favorite Costco rotisserie chicken to solve that problem. I LOVE those things! I use them to make quesadillas, soup, chicken salad, enchiladas and white chicken chili. Of course when you get home from shopping and you’re really hungry, what smells or tastes better than a nice hunk of chicken right out of the plastic container (still hot!)? But I digress.

So, with the chicken problem solved, I turned to the vegetables. Our tortilla soup recipe calls for everything to get chopped up in the Vitamix, so that’s what I did for this one. I threw the onion, the celery, the carrots, the garlic and the fire roasted tomatoes into the Vitamix with 2 cups of chicken broth until everything was pretty smooth. Around here we don’t really like super chunky soup. Even though my kids are older, I still like to sneak in the veggies when I can.

So, besides the chicken and veg, we just spice it up a bit to our liking, add the rest of the broth and quinoa, and we’re done (after 4 hours or so in the crockpot)!

Here’s our video showing your step-by-step instructions:

Italian Chicken Quinoa Soup

INGREDIENTS

• 2 chicken breasts or 2 cups rotisserie chicken, shredded
• ½ cup chopped onion (use more or less according to your preference)
• 1 cup chopped celery
• 1 cup chopped carrots
• 1 ½ teaspoon minced garlic
• 1 can fire roasted tomatoes (you can use regular, but these have a really good flavor!)
• ¾ cup uncooked quinoa (buy the kind you don’t have to rinse, I beg you!)
• 6 cups chicken broth (or use 6 cups water and 6 boullion cubes. Whatever.)
• 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning blend
• 2 teaspoons dried oregano
• ½ tablespoon dried basil
• Salt and pepper (I like to use coarse garlic salt with parsley)
• Shredded Parmesan cheese for topping

DIRECTIONS

In a blender, add 2 cups of chicken broth and all the veggies. Blend until smooth and put in the slow cooker. Add the rest of the broth, chicken, spices and quinoa. Give a quick stir and cook on high for 4 hours or until the quinoa has popped (looks like little “cs”). Serve with a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese.

If you want chunky soup, chop the veggies the way you like (instead of blending) and follow directions above.

I like to serve mine with garlic toast. I am sure that a delish grilled cheese made with fresh mozzarella would be INSANE! DO IT!! For those of us watching carbs and calories, just serve as is. It is very filling and DELISH!

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