Creamy chicken soup with homemade stock

It's worth taking the time to make the stock for this creamy and comforting soup, which can be frozen.

Copper bowel filled with creamy chicken soup and garnished with chives

By Carlton Boyce | Published - 17 Dec 2025

If anyone in your family is feeling under the weather, chicken soup is the ultimate pick-me-up. It’s cheap, too, because this recipe uses the chicken carcasses your butcher usually throws away.

The key is to use homemade stock, which adds a depth and complexity (and richness, thanks to the gelatin the chicken bones impart) that no stock cube can hope to match.

Ingredients

For the stock

3-4 chicken carcasses (if you use your local butcher, they probably won’t charge you for them)
2 carrots
1 onion
1 stick of celery
2-3 bay leaves
12 peppercorns
Water to cover

For the soup

The shredded chicken that you've pulled from the carcasses
150ml single cream
Salt and pepper

Method

How to make the chicken stock

Put the carcasses in a roasting tin and roast in a hot oven until they start to brown.
Take them out of the oven and put them in a large saucepan, breaking them into pieces if you need to.
Rinse the roasting tin out with boiling water, pouring the pan juices and water into the saucepan with the chicken.
Add the roughly chopped carrots, celery, onion, peppercorns and bay leaves.
Cover and bring to the boil. Simmer gently for at least two hours.
Remove from the heat and leave to cool. Sieve the stock into a large bowl or jug and leave to cool in the fridge. Pull all the chicken from the carcasses and store in a covered bowl or Tupperware container until needed.

How to make the chicken soup

Take a couple of litres of the chicken stock and boil it in a saucepan until it's reduced by half.
Add the shredded chicken meat and heat through for a couple of minutes.
Remove from the heat and add the cream. Stir well, season to taste and serve immediately.

Notes

Variations

You can boil the stock down to make the most delicious chicken gravy in the world, although you do need about six litres to make a decent gravy boat’s worth! You don’t add anything else; just boil it down until it is as thick and tasty as you like it.

Thrifty tips

You can freeze both the stock and the meat at stage 6. It can then be defrosted and used to make a chicken risotto or casserole instead of soup.
The soup freezes well, so you can also make a large batch, scaling up from this recipe as necessary. Just pour into clean takeaway containers straight from the saucepan, or let it cool a little before ladling into freezer bags.

(Hero image credit: Getty)

Written by: Carlton Boyce

Carlton gave up being a prison governor to become a freelance motoring journalist six years ago, and now earns his living travelling the world driving, photographing and writing about cars. He’s also previously worked as a lumberjack, police officer, retail manager, breakfast chef, and smallholder, allowing him to write about more than just cars.

View author page

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