Chicken & Vegetable Soup with Potatoes

This chicken and vegetable soup with potatoes is made with a flavorful veggie base with succulent pieces of bone in chicken and hearty potatoes for body. It's stick-to-your-ribs hearty without being heavy.

Ingredients

Chicken: Bone in chicken with the skin is the best for making soups because the bones and skin add lots of flavor. The chicken pieces are browned before making the soup, which adds more complexity.

Potatoes: If you have both waxy and floury potatoes then a mix of both is the best of both worlds. Waxy will hold their shape for a thinner soup with more distinct components. Floury potatoes will break down and thicken the soup.

Vegetables: Besides all important onion, I also used fermented soup starter to make this soup. If you love flavorful soups it's really worth the time investment to make a batch so you have some on hand for starting soups.

You can also substitute a mix of carrot, parsnip, celery root, green and red pepper, thinly sliced tomato and lots of fresh parsley to replicate the same soup. Otherwise use your own preferred vegetable mix (even a store bought one to make things easier).

Seasoning: This soup has salt, black pepper and thyme. There's plenty of flavor from the vegetable base and bone in chicken so you don't need to add a lot more.

Oil: For browning the chicken pieces and sautéing the onion.

Cream: A bit of whipping cream can be added to the soup after cooking to make it creamy. This is optional.

Instructions

Step 1: Prep the vegetables.

• Finely dice the onion;
• Cube the potato;
• Finely dice the parsley.

Set the prepped ingredients aside in separate bowls.

If you are using fresh vegetables instead of fermented soup starter, then also prep the following:

• Grate 2 carrots;
• Thinly slice a tomato;
• Finely cube ½ a red bell pepper and ½ a green bell pepper;
• Finely cube about a ¼ cup of celery root and ¼ cup of parsnip
• Finely dice about 4 tablespoons fresh flat leaf parsley.

They can go in the same bowl as the potatoes.

Note that parsley is added twice in this recipe: first to the soup itself and also at the end for garnish.

So if you're prepping your own vegetables be sure to prep the extra parsley in the recipe notes not just the parsley in the recipe card.

Step 2: Brown the chicken and sauté the onion

Put the chicken pieces in in one layer and leave room for air to escape or they will steam instead of browning.

They don't need to be evenly brown all over - just a bit for flavor. Remove from pot and set aside in a plate once browned. You can also do them in batches to prevent steaming. This should take 3-5 minutes.

After removing the browned chicken pieces, put the diced onion into the hot oil.

Sauté the onion until it's translucent and aromatic.

Step 3: Put everything in the pot and simmer

Then add the soup starter/vegetables, potatoes, chicken, seasonings and pour in 1 liter (4 cups) water. The water should cover everything in the pot.

Finally, bring the soup to simmer then cover and reduce heat to medium-low. Cook covered for 30 minutes.

Step 4: Taste, adjust and garnish

Once cooked taste and adjust seasoning. Add parsley and swirl in cream (if desired).

How to serve this soup

Soup is always great with crusty bread. You can also do like we do in Romania and serve it with hot pickled chilis like banana peppers. Nothing to warm you up like hot soup with hot peppers.

Recipe

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Here are more traditional Romanian recipes.