30-Minute Chicken and Vegetable Mediterranean Soup — An EASY soup that’s both HEALTHY and HEARTY!! Loaded with tender chicken, vegetables, garbanzo beans, and more! Ready so fast and it’s perfect for busy chilly winter weeknights!!
Mediterranean Chicken and Vegetable Soup Recipe
This Mediterranean chicken soup is hearty, filling, naturally gluten-free, and will keep you warm from the inside out on chilly days without adding an ounce of guilt (hello, Italian sausage and pasta).
You could easily omit the chicken to keep the soup vegan. If you’re looking for another great vegan soup recipe that’s loaded with vegetables, try my Weight Loss Vegetable Soup. Even if you’re not trying to lose weight, it’s one of my favorite vegetable soups!
There are plenty of veggies in this soup, including onions, celery, fire-roasted tomatoes, and kale. All those veggies keep you full for quite some time.
Additionally, you can’t have chicken soup without chicken so there are tasty chunks of boneless skinless chicken breast as well as garbanzo beans for an extra boost of protein and fiber. (I used low-salt chicken stock so that I could control the sodium of the soup.)
What’s In Chicken Mediterranean Soup?
To make the healthy Mediterranean soup recipe, you’ll need:
- Olive oil
- Veggies (onion, celery, garlic, kale, artichoke hearts, fire-roasted tomatoes, zucchini)
- Chicken breasts
- Chicken broth
- Garbanzo beans
- Lemon juice
- Cayenne pepper
How to Make Healthy Mediterranean Soup
Simply brown an onion with celery before adding raw chicken, garlic, and seasoning with a generous amount of Italian seasoning. Add fire-roasted tomatoes and all of their juices, artichokes, along with 64 ounces of chicken stock.
After simmering briefly, add the kale, garbanzo beans, and turn off the heat. The kale will instantly turn vibrant green and wilt. Finish with lemon juice (read below why) and get ready to dive in.
Can I Use Different Vegetables?
Of course! Feel free to mix and match with the vegetables or beans of your choice. Easy additions or substitutions include zucchini, carrots, cannellini beans, swapping fresh spinach for kale, or incorporating fresh basil at the end.
Although my family isn’t a big fan, black olives or the olives of your choice would really emphasize the Mediterranean theme.
Tips for Making Mediterranean Vegetable Soup
First, make sure you season sufficiently with salt. I use kosher salt and in this recipe used nearly two tablespoons. That sounds like a lot but when you need to flavor a pound of chicken, a gallon of chicken broth that was the low-sodium variety, and add flavor to all the various vegetables and greens, you need salt.
Part of what makes soup so tasty and comforting is salt. Restaurants and prepared soup that comes in cans and cardboard containers tend to go overboard, but you do need a decent amount of salt to make soup taste like soup.
Secondly, I finish almost all my soups with a tablespoon or two of lemon juice. Sometimes I use apple cider vinegar, but the acidic presence of either lemon juice or vinegar really brightens the flavor profile in almost all soups that aren’t cream-based or a bisque (i.e. skip the acids in broccoli cheese soup, creamy tomato, shrimp bisque, and so forth). In a soup with a Mexican flair like Chicken Tortilla, I use lime juice.
It is truly amazing with just a tiny bit of lemon/lime juice or vinegar can do to your soup. If you taste your soup and it seems a little flat, boring, or is lacking pizazz, it’s begging for a dash of an acidic liquid.
Thirdly, I frequently add a pinch of cayenne pepper to soup. I know there are people who loathe spicy food, and in most cases, I am not looking for my soups to be spicy, and I promise that the cayenne pepper doesn’t make the soup spicy in the least.
Rather, in this case, the cayenne adds a depth of flavor and some oomph to what could otherwise be a big pot of bland. I am talking two shakes from the pepper shaker to a gallon of liquid and pounds of other ingredients. It would be chemically impossible for two shakes to turn things ‘spicy’.
This is another situation where if you feel your soup is good, but missing something, try the cayenne pepper trick. Start with the tiniest pinch ever and see how it goes and work up from there.
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30-Minute Mediterranean Chicken Soup
Ingredients
- 4 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 extra-large sweet Vidalia or yellow onion, peeled and diced small
- 2-3 large stalks celery, diced small
- 4 garlic cloves, peeled and finely minced or pressed
- 1 pound boneless skinless chicken breast, raw, diced into small pieces
- 1 tablespoon Italian seasoning, or to taste
- 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or to taste
- one 15-ounce can fire-roasted tomatoes, do not drain
- 12 ounces artichoke hearts, I use frozen
- 64 ounces 8 cups low-sodium chicken stock
- 1 small zucchini, diced small, optional
- one 15-ounce can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed (I used no-salt added)
- leaves from 4 large stalks of kale, torn into bite-sized pieces (discard the center thick rib)
- kosher salt, to taste (I used almost 2 tablespoons because I used low/no sodium products)
- 1 to 2 tablespoons lemon juice, optional but recommended (brightens up the flavor)
- pinch of cayenne pepper, optional and to taste
Instructions
- To a large Dutch oven or stockpot, add the oil, onion, celery, and sauté over medium-high heat for about 7-8 minutes, or until vegetables begin to soften. Stir intermittently.
- Add the garlic, chicken, evenly sprinkle with Italian seasoning, pepper, and sauté for about 3 minutes, or until chicken is about two-thirds of the way cooked through; stir nearly constantly to ensure even cooking.
- Add the tomatoes and juice, artichokes, chicken broth, optional zucchini, and boil about 5 minutes, or chicken is cooked through.
- Add the beans, kale, turn off the heat, and allow kale to wilt, about 1 to 2 minutes.
- Taste the soup and add salt to taste. Depending on your preference for salt, and how salty your ingredients were (the stock, tomatoes, beans), the amount of salt will vary.
- Optionally add the lemon juice, cayenne pepper (read the blog post while I highly recommend both), and serve immediately.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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great
Awesome soup!! We got some snow this weekend and it hit the spot! It’s hearty but feels so healthy too with all those veggies.
Awesome soup!! We got some snow this weekend and it hit the spot! It’s hearty but feels so healthy too with all those veggies.
Thanks for the 5 star review and glad this was awesome! I agree hearty but still healthy and glad it hit the spot!
This is such a keeper! I’ve made some pretty extravagant chicken soups, but my wife says this is the best EVAH! I accidentally bought oil packed artichokes, so I rinsed them off, and forgot the zucchini, but somehow it turned out perfect! Thanks Averie!
This is such a keeper! I’ve made some pretty extravagant chicken soups, but my wife says this is the best EVAH! I accidentally bought oil packed artichokes, so I rinsed them off, and forgot the zucchini, but somehow it turned out perfect! Thanks Averie!
Glad to hear this is a keeper and your wife says it’s the best ever! Oil-packed artichokes are totally fine, they just add more fat, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing :) and no zucchini…oops but just shows you what a flexible recipe it is, most of my soups are!
This looks amazing! Can’t wait to add it to the menu next week!
Paige
https://thehappyflammily.com
It’s perfect for chilly winter days!
Why is the 30-Minute Mediterranean Chicken Soup so high in calories? The ingredients used are not that high in calories.
I added a comment directly below the stats addressing this.
I see it, thank you so much!!! The soup sounds and looks so delicious. Thank you!!!
It’s one of those weird glitches I don’t understand but also don’t have time to deal with right away. Need to be in the kitchen cooking!
I love soup and will be making this one next. I make soup every 7-10 days(regardless of the season) and put it in Pint size mason jars while it’s piping hot. Once cooled I put it in the fridge and the single serving sized jars keep till the next batch is made.
I will post a picture when I make it.
I also make your snickerdoodle squares and everyone LOVES them. I’ve made them so many times I’ve lost count!
Great to hear you plan to make this and also that everyone loves the snickerdoodles!