White Bean Ground Chicken Soup

This creamy white bean and ground chicken soup is one of my favorite meal prep recipes. It makes a big batch with 10 massive servings weighing around 3/4-pound each. And every serving is packed with 23 grams of protein, 8 grams of filling fiber, and just 255 calories. You’ll never believe a chicken soup could be this creamy with only 3 grams of fat per serving!

This recipe is based on a turkey chili recipe from a member of our best Austin, Texas restaurants list, Jack Gilmore of Jack Allen’s Kitchen. If you’re a JA fan, you can get his cookbook here.

How to Make This White Bean Ground Chicken Soup

This is a really simple recipe that’s as easy as cooking some bacon, onion, and ground chicken together before adding salsa verde, canned white beans, chicken broth, and a handful of seasonings. But there are plenty of tweaks you can make to both ingredients and cooking methods. For example, I’ve included instructions for an Instant Pot or pressure cooker, stovetop, and slow cooker in the post below.

If you’re using an Instant Pot and are ready to rock, you can probably skip straight to the recipe card at the bottom of the post.

Cook diced onion and chopped bacon together until they begin to brown.

You’ll want to make sure and add both ingredients to a cold pot whether you’re using an Instant Pot or cooking on the stovetop. Starting in a cold pan gives the fat in the bacon time to render, which will beautifully brown the onion and bacon without needing any extra cooking oil.

You can get an idea of the color you’re looking for in the photo above (right side). The bacon shouldn’t be crispy, so don’t worry about that.

Be sure to stir occasionally and scrape any fond off the bottom of the pot to avoid any burned bits. Once you add the ground chicken, you’ll have a bit more liquid to help deglaze the pot.

Add ground chicken and break apart to fully cook.

I like to push the onion and bacon to one side to clear up a little surface area for browning the ground chicken, but you’re not after that much browning here. Just get the chicken cooked and broken apart, and you’ll be good to go.

Add canned white beans, salsa verde, chopped garlic, corn tortillas, ground cumin and coriander, dried oregano, and chicken broth.

I used a jar of Herdez salsa verde. While it’s not the world’s best salsa verde, it’s super convenient. Making your own homemade salsa verde or a tomatillo sauce would be the best move if you’re up for it.

The corn tortillas will thicken your ground chicken soup and provide some great flavor, so don’t forget to add them!

And for the garlic, the recipe calls for raw chopped garlic. I think adding a little extra garlic powder would be fine if you like a garlic-heavy soup. Or if you really wanted to up your game, you could make some of my air fryer roasted garlic ahead of time and use that.

Cook until the tortillas have completely dissolved and the garlic and onion are tender.

Here’s a quick rundown of the different methods you can use to cook your ground chicken soup.

Instant Pot

This is the method I used for testing, and it’s what’s used in the photos you see above. Once you have everything in the pot mixed together, simply seal and cook with high pressure for 20 minutes. You can use quick release pressure if you’re ready to serve right away, or you can let everything hang out together and let the pressure vent naturally.

Stovetop

Cook the bacon and onion in a large soup pot over medium-high heat, starting in a room temperature pot. Achieve the same browning before adding and cooking the ground chicken.

Once everything is in the pot together, bring your ground chicken soup up to a boil before reducing to a simmer for about 30 minutes. You can add extra broth if your soup reduces more than you’d like.

Slow Cooker

Use a large skillet to brown the bacon and onion before adding the ground chicken and fully cooking. Add the mixture to a slow cooker with everything else and cook on low for around 3-4 hours. You can obviously let it go longer.

You can also use a slow cooker to make a very similar recipe with boneless chicken thighs in my creamy salsa verde chicken stew.

How to Serve This Creamy White Bean Ground Chicken Soup

With the high protein content, we like to serve this soup as a main dish. A little freshly chopped cilantro, jalapeño, and avocado works perfectly on top. You might also like queso fresco and a dollop of sour cream or fat free Greek yogurt.

The Tex-Mex flavors mean tortilla chips edge out the typical crusty bread you might serve with a white bean soup. I like baking extra thin corn tortillas to make lower calorie tortilla chips and strips.

To add some more veggies to the affair, you might try something like a chopped Mexican salad or guacamole greens salad.

More High Protein Soup and Chili Recipes

• Creamy Taco Soup
• Slow Cooker Texas Chili
• Instant Pot Turkey Chili
• Cheeseburger Soup
• Mexican Chicken Soup

I hope you enjoy your white bean ground chicken soup! If you do, I always appreciate recipe reviews. And if you have a question about the recipe I forgot to cover, leave a comment at the bottom of this post.