Mexican Chicken Rice Soup

This Mexican Chicken Rice Soup is anything but boring – The soup is made with fresh poblano peppers, tomatoes, chicken, corn, onions, garlic, jalapeno peppers, fresh spinach and rice.

Spices For Mexican Chicken Rice Soup

The flavour is typical Mexican spices such as cumin, chilli powder and oregano. To finish the soup, I added fresh cilantro and lime juice. This soup to me is → happy food 🙂

Chicken and rice is a classic soup combination, perfect when you need a pick me up or feeling under the weather. This soup delivers healing properties making you feel cozy all over. It’s a perfect everyday healthy soup.

Key points when making Mexican chicken rice soup.

To start, the rice has to be cooked first. You may ask why not cook it in the soup with everything else? The reason is, if you add the uncooked rice into the soup, the rice will absorb most of the broth, and you will have a risotto instead of soup.

Then again, if you added just boiled rice to the soup, although the soup broth is flavourful, the plain rice will make the soup bland. So, the rice has to be cooked in a flavourful broth first.

You can cook the rice in a chicken broth, but it is not necessary if you add cumin, bay leaf and lime zest as it calls in this Mexican chicken rice soup recipe. The rice will be so flavourful you will want to eat it without adding it to the soup.

For the soup, it is pretty straightforward, except for the poblano peppers. If you can’t find poblano peppers use green peppers.

How to remove skin from peppers for Mexican chicken rice soup

For the poblano peppers, we must remove the skin. To do this, place the peppers under a broiler or open flame until they start to char.

Then, once they peppers are slightly cooled, the skin comes off very easily. And don’t forget to remove the seeds.

Best chicken for Mexican chicken rice soup.

For the chicken it must have bones, I used thighs, the meat is juicier than the breast.

It is mostly bones that flavour the broth, this is why you don’t have to add store-bought chicken broth. The bones are later removed, and the chicken meat is chopped.

At the very end, the cooked rice is added. The soup is brought to a boil and then immediately removed from the heat.

Finish the soup with fresh cilantro, spinach and lime juice.

Next add the cilantro, spinach and lime juice. And this is how you make the best Mexican chicken rice soup.

Toppings are a must for Mexican chicken rice soup!

We mustn’t forget about the toppings, because this soup is a meal in a bowl once you add the various fresh toppings. Some of our favorites are chopped cilantro, plain Greek yogurt or sour cream, avocado slices, shredded cheese, lime wedges and corn chips. Enjoy!

Anotther gluten free Mexican soup you may enjoy is the fajita chicken soup.