Creamy Chicken and Wild Rice Soup…YUMMY

So I will admit it I LOVE PANERA BREAD! There I said it I love it, the hubs does not share this love. Therefore I don’t exactly get to go dine at their restaurants real frequently, plus there isn’t one in a forty-five minute radius of my home, I know be sad for me. And I wasn’t real impressed with their EZ Chicken campaign that they ran this summer, where they inaccurately portrayed farmers that used antibiotics in their products as Lazy Farmers. But I am not getting into all of that!


Anyway I seriously love their soups and I particularly enjoy their chicken and wild rice soup. With fall on its way a few weeks ago I began searching for a recipe and found one for this soup that seemed to suit my fancy, I knew I wanted to make a few tweeks. This Sunday provided the perfect weather to try out the soup, cold and dreary. Well the hubs response was “This is the best soup you have made yet.” Maybe he should rethink his stance on Panera.

Back to the business at hand, make this soup it is super easy and delish to boot! Here is the link to the original recipe and below is my version. I changed up the process a bit and I reduced the amount of cream/dairy basically because I don’t handle dairy well. If you didn’t know this about me well you do now I love it but it does not love me back.

Panera Style Creamy Chicken and Wild Rice Soup

6 cups Chicken Broth (I used a big can)

2 boneless skinless Chicken Breast

1 box of Uncle Bens Wild Rice

1 ¼ sticks butter

1 cup onion diced

1 cup carrot diced

1 cup celery diced

½ cup flour

Salt and pepper to taste

1 ½ cup Whole Milk

1 ½ cup Chicken Stock in the box

In a large soup pot, I used my oval dutch oven, bring the 6 cups of broth to a light boil and poach your chicken breasts. While they are poaching I work on chopping all my veggies. In a skillet melt your butter once it is melted add your veggies, let them sauté. Once your chicken is finished take it out to cool and put your rice minus the seasoning packet in the broth and cook for 15 minutes. In that 15 minutes your veggies should be getting soft. After the veggies are softening add the rice seasoning packet to them stir really well. Add the flour to the skillet and season with salt and pepper stir this for several minutes to allow the flour to cook out. Once this has happened add the milk and stock stir to thicken. Add the creamy veggie mixture to the broth and rice at this point you should dice up your chicken and add it as well allow the whole kitten caboodle to simmer for 20 minutes!