Easy, creamy chicken paprikash soup is bound to be your new go to favorite! Its full of rich comforting flavor, creamy, and more filling than your standard classic soup recipe. Simply seasoned with Hungarian paprika, taragon, oregano, tomatoes and sour cream, it all comes together in the most delightful way. The soup is loaded with veggies too so its as wholesome as it is delicious!
I have been making a variation of this chicken paprikash soup for years now. When I worked a block away from an Elephant’s Deli downtown, I would make the trek over to get their Mama Leone’s soup about once a week. I did this for the seven years I worked there which added up to being a lot of soup.
Luckily, I found a similar paprika soup recipe online around that time and have adjusted it over the years into the recipe I’m sharing with you now. The original recipe is made with heavy cream but I used sour cream instead which lightens and thickens the soup a bit so you’ll be more satisfied with less of it. I tried yogurt once but it just wasn’t the same – tested and failed so don’t try that substitution!
I also added in a slew of veggies and tweaked the seasonings to fit our preferences. The end result is so satisfying and delicious! You’re going to love this one. I also have an African peanut soup recipe that is creamy like this one and absolutely delightful.
If you’re still not convinced to try this chicken paprika soup out, know that its not just me that sings its praises. Pretty much everyone that I’ve served this soup to has asked for the recipe.
The heavy paprika flavor and overall creaminess make it uniquely different than your standard chicken soup, while still maintaining that comforting quality that makes us all crave it on cold winter days.
If you’ve never had chicken paprika soup and are wondering if you’ll like it, bite the bullet and give it a try. Its pretty easy to make and, as with all soup recipes, is easily adaptable to your preferences (i.e. whatever veggies you have lurking in the back of your fridge).
Got a few potatoes? Throw ’em in. Don’t have parsley? Leave it out. Don’t have sour cream but have half and half? Use it! As long as you get the basics right, you can modify to fit your needs. I’ve added tons of extra veggies and thickened it up more like a stew before which was delicious.
Normally, chicken paprikash soup comes to be when we have leftovers from a whole chicken, either roasted myself or store bought. You can easily bake a few chicken breasts to use instead but having that roasted dark/light meat combo really adds a whole new depth of flavor. Plus it makes you feel like an all out kitchen goddess, which is always nice. You know, the kind of goddess that gets elbow deep in chicken carcasses? That kind.
When using a leftover whole chicken, I remove all of the meat I can from the bones and then boil them with some veggies to make my own stock. Then, you drain and discard those veggies and bones and have the best bone marrow chicken stock you can get. To make this even easier and avoid waste, I keep a baggie in my freezer for veggie scraps (onion peels, carrot tops, bell pepper stems, etc.) and then dump those in the stock pot when the time comes.
Perfectly Creamy Chicken Paprikash Soup
Ingredients
- 2 Tbsp. butter
- 1/2 cup white whole wheat flour
- 1 large onion, diced
- 2 red bell peppers, diced
- 4 stalks of celery, sliced
- 6 large carrots, peeled and sliced
- 1 Tbsp. minced garlic
- 1/2 tsp. dried tarragon
- 1/2 tsp. dried oregano
- 1 Tbsp. sweet Hungarian paprika
- 1/2 tsp. black pepper
- 2 tsp. salt (adjust to taste, depends on saltiness of broth used)
- 8 cups low-sodium chicken stock or broth
- 1 can diced tomatoes (14.5 oz)
- 3 cups cooked chicken torn into bite sized pieces*
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- 3 Tbsp. chopped parsley
- 3 cups baby spinach, roughly chopped
Instructions
- Heat butter in a large stockpot over medium heat. Sauté the onion, red pepper, celery, and carrot for 8-9 minutes until vegetables are starting to brown and onions are translucent.
- Add the garlic, tarragon, oregano, paprika salt and pepper. Cook, stirring, for 3 or 4 minutes until aromatic.
- Add flour and stir until absorbed to make a roux. Slowly whisk in 1 cup of chicken broth. Add 1 more cup and whisk in before slowly pouring in the remaining chicken broth and tomatoes.
- Increase heat to high and bring to a boil.
- Add the sour cream and stir to dissolve. Add chicken, reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes.
- Remove from heat and add spinach and parsley. Garnish individual bowls with parsley if desired when serving.
Notes
Nutrition
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Recipe adapted from Spark People Mama Leone’s Soup
Comments & Reviews
I recently came across your site. I like the complexity in some of the recipes. I was looking at the Chicken Paprikash Soup and i will make it. I need to watch my sodium intake and have become quite adept at adjusting recipes to suit my needs. I did notice, however, that the sodium listed in the nutrient section does not even begin to cover the salt added, let alone any other sodium that is in this recipe. I will make up my own nutrient values. Keep up the good work with the attention to detail in the dishes.
Thanks for letting me know Peter! And I’m so happy you’re liking my recipes. I use a plugin that pulls from a database full of nutrition inputs and sometimes they’re off. I’ll check this one out and see if there’s anything I can do to make it more accurate. 🙂
How do I print ONLY the recipe??
I just changed that setting so if you try now it should let you print without the image. Let me know if you still have any problems!