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This Asian Chicken Soup is easy to make and full of healthy, delicious ingredients!
The aroma of certain foods cooking in the kitchen can often evoke a strong response – and for me, chicken soup does it every time! Our home always feels ‘more homey’ when a big pot of chicken soup is simmering on the stove.
While a classic chicken noodle soup definitely hits the spot – today’s Asian Chicken Soup is just as good – and it’s a nice, healthy change of pace!
The stock in this Asian Chicken Soup is infused with fantastic flavor from fresh ginger, scallions, and cilantro. Those ingredients are added to the pot along with a whole chicken and some additional chicken wings for more flavor, plus water, pre-made chicken broth, celery, whole black peppercorns, and kosher salt.
It takes about two hours for the pot of stock to simmer away and reduce (filling your house with that glorious aroma!) and allowing the flavors to intensity. Then, you’ll drain the stock – removing the solids and shredding the cooked chicken to add to the finished Asian Chicken Soup.
While your Asian-inspired chicken stock cooks, start prepping the other ingredients to add to the soup: baby Bok choy bottoms, more scallions, shiitake mushrooms, and some garlic chili sauce. These ingredients are all lightly sautéed before adding them to the reduced chicken stock, along with soy sauce, water chestnuts, snow peas, and the tops of the baby Bok choy.
Once spooned into a bowl, top your Asian Chicken Soup with more chopped cilantro, scallion tops, and fresh mint.
And – although we didn’t include noodles in our own recipe today – bean thread or cellophane noodles would be a great addition if you’d like to go that route.
We love seeing what you made! Tag us on Instagram at @afamilyfeast or hashtag #afamilyfeast so we can see your creations!
Asian Chicken Soup
Ingredients
Stock
1 whole frying chicken with neck, about 5 pounds
8 chicken wings or one turkey wing
2 teaspoons kosher salt
3 ounces’ fresh ginger, peeled and sliced into quarter inch slices (about ½ cup)
1 bunch scallions cut into thirds
12 sprigs cilantro (including stems)
1 ½ teaspoons black peppercorns whole
1 celery stalk cut into quarters
1 quart store bought chicken stock, or home made if you have it
6 quarts’ water
Soup
1 tablespoon peanut oil
1 pound baby Bok choy (see note)
1 bunch scallions, bottoms and tops separated and each sliced
7 ounces’ shiitake mushrooms, stems removed and discarded and caps sliced
1 teaspoon garlic chili sauce (or more if you like it spicy)
4 quarts of stock from above
2 tablespoons soy sauce
8 ounces’ snow peas trimmed and cut in half
1 5-ounce can water chestnuts drained and sliced
2 pounds’ chicken meat from above
Garnish
¼ cup cilantro leaves coarsely chopped
Scallion tops sliced
2 tablespoons fresh mint, chopped
Instructions
Place chicken and all stock ingredients in a medium to large pot and bring to a boil. Lower to a fast simmer and simmer for two hours uncovered.
Remove chicken and wings and discard remaining solids. There should be four quarts (one gallon) of stock left. If more, cook down to four quarts. If less, add a little water to equal four quarts.
Separate skin and bones from meat and shred meat with two forks. Set aside and discard skin and bones.
Note: Clean baby Bok choy of any sand and separate the whites from the tops. Chop the tops and set aside. Remove core from bottoms and discard. Cut the bunch in half the long way then each half in half and slice into pieces. Set aside.
In a large heavy bottomed pot or Dutch oven, heat peanut oil over medium high heat.
Add Bok choy bottoms, scallion bottoms, mushrooms and garlic chili sauce. Sauté for three minutes.
Add stock, soy sauce, snow peas, water chestnuts and chopped Bok choy tops.
Cook for two minutes.
Add chicken meat, bring back to serving temperature and serve.
Serve topped with scallion tops, cilantro and mint.
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Chicken Noodle Soup (aka New York Penicillin)
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Nice soup i am trying it.
Just a Question .
I am Greek and i try to understand the meaning simmer and poaching .
By mistake now that i am coocking , seems that i am poaching after a 40 minute Boil but with lid on 🙂 .
Would this make it work ?
Best Regards
Hi Peter! You are correct in that both are “boiling” terms – simmering refers to how vigorous you are boiling the water. A full boil would be high heat, big bubbles in the liquid, while a simmer would be low heat and small bubbles. A fast simmer is somewhere in between – still small bubbles but not as low heat. Poaching refers to cooking food in a small about of water or other liquid – think of cooking a poached egg…you’d be ‘poaching’ the egg in ‘simmering’ water. I hope that helps!
PReperation is Poor.
I can’t even find out how much time to boil
Should the top be open or closed ?
Nice soup but can’t know what to do
Hi Costas – You must have missed the sentence in the first step of the instructions where it says: “Lower to a fast simmer and simmer for two hours uncovered.”
Too salty! Decent flavor otherwise
Thanks for your feedback Colleen. If you used store-bought chicken broth, you might prefer a low-sodium option. If you made a homemade chicken stock, feel free to adjust the salt to suit your tastes. And, you could use low-sodium soy sauce as an alternative to suite your tastes.
I have printed this recipe to use as a basic reference for every time I want to make Asian chicken soup. It’s so easy to change up the vegetables, and once you have the basic ingredients, it always tastes right. Thank you! (I do wish there weren’t so many blinking pop-up ads on the page, though.)
Thanks for your feedback Rachel – glad you enjoy the soup!
Hi, do you think I could make this in the slow cooker?
Hi Sara – The bulk of the cooking time for this soup is to make the stock…we prefer making our stock on the stovetop because the water has a chance to reduce as it simmers away. When you make stock in the slow cooker, the moisture doesn’t evaporate or reduce, so the flavors don’t intensify in the same way. (Having said that – there are lots of recipes online for slow cooker chicken stock. This is just our opinion.) Once you’ve made the stock, the rest of the soup goes quickly and I’d be afraid that the vegetables would over cook if you had it in the slow cooker for hours. So…we personally wouldn’t use the slow cooker for this recipe. But you could make the stock in a slow cooker if you prefer. Hope that helps!
The soup was absolutely delicious – thanks for such a great simple recipe! And it literally made me feel better as I was eating it 🙂
Wow – thanks Diane!
I want to make this soup, but I need the nutrtion chart for the protein, carbs, and so on
I’m sorry Carol – we do not provide nutritional information for our recipes at this time.