Chicken and leek barley soup
A warm chicken soup with soft leeks, carrots and pearl barley.
About 55 min · 405 kcal · 36 g protein per serving
Chicken, celery and butter bean soup with rosemary
A clear chicken broth with celery, butter beans and rosemary.
By The foodose editorial team. Nutrition calculated from USDA FoodData Central. Checked on paper on 22 September 2026; not yet cooked in a test kitchen or photographed, so the times and yield are estimates. How we develop our recipes
What still needs a real kitchen
- Confirm whole breasts poach through in 14 to 16 minutes at a bare simmer
- Photograph the finished bowl
- Time
- About 44 min
- estimated
- Serves
- 2
- see below
- Energy
- 505 kcal
- per serving
- Protein
- 47 g
- per serving
Ingredients for 2 servings
Check off ingredients as you go.
Contains celery. Check the labels on packaged ingredients:
- chicken stock. Stock often contains celery, and sometimes gluten or soya; check the label.
Cooking steps
Chop the rosemary needles finely before anything else. Left in sprigs they perfume the broth and then everyone finds a needle in their bowl.
Soften the diced onion and celery in the oil with the rosemary over medium-low heat for 10 minutes.
Add the stock and bring it to a bare simmer, then lower in the chicken breasts whole and poach for 14 to 16 minutes.
Cooked when: 74°C / 165°F in the thickest part. A food thermometer is the reliable way to tell.
Lift the chicken onto a board, rest it for 5 minutes and shred it with two forks.
Add the drained butter beans to the pot and warm through for 5 minutes, then return the chicken and finish with the parsley.
The useful detail
Chop the rosemary finely and early. It is the one herb that does not soften in a broth, and a whole needle found at the bottom of a bowl is a small and entirely avoidable unpleasantness.
Make it work for you
One serving is A deep bowl, half the pot. You can switch to a smaller portion in the ingredients above; it is three quarters of this, and it contains correspondingly less energy and protein. It is an option, not a goal.
Cannellini beans instead of butter beans
Smaller and firmer, and they hold their shape better.
Per serving: about the same energy, about the same protein, about the same fat.
Turkey breast instead of chicken
Leaner and firmer when shredded; a couple of minutes longer.
Per serving: about 10 kcal less, about 1 g more protein, about 1 g less fat.
Fresh thyme instead of rosemary
Milder and softer, and it does not need chopping as finely.
Per serving: about the same energy, about the same protein, about the same fat.
Estimated nutrition
Per standard serving, calculated from the ingredients above. Nutrition changes with substitutions, brands and how much oil stays in the pan.
A broth that is a meal, at more than 40 g of protein a serving, because the chicken and the beans are both doing the work.
| Energy | 505 kcal |
|---|---|
| Protein | 47 g |
| Fat | 12 g |
| of which saturates | 2 g |
| Carbohydrate | 53 g |
| of which sugars | 7 g |
| Fibre | 12 g |
| Sodium | 2,580 mg |
Show calculation notes
Each ingredient’s weight is multiplied by its USDA FoodData Central values per 100 g. The whole recipe is added up and divided by 2. Raw weights are used for meat, fish and vegetables; beans and lentils are drained weights. All of the oil is counted as eaten. Added salt is not included; sodium from stock, bread, cheese and tinned food is.
| Ingredient | Weight used | Source | Energy | Protein |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| onion | 120 g | FDC 170000Onions, raw | 48 kcal | 1.3 g |
| celery | 200 g | FDC 169988Celery, raw | 28 kcal | 1.4 g |
| olive oil | 14 g | FDC 171413Oil, olive, salad or cooking | 121 kcal | 0.0 g |
| fresh rosemary | 5 g | FDC 173473Rosemary, freshA teaspoon of chopped rosemary weighs 0.7 g, about 1 kcal on FoodData Central 173473. That record has no sugars value, so the rosemary is listed here rather than counted, which keeps the recipe's sugars calculable. | · | · |
| chicken stock | 945 g | FDC 174536Soup, chicken broth, ready-to-serve | 57 kcal | 6.1 g |
| chicken breast | 250 g | FDC 171077Chicken, broiler or fryers, breast, skinless, boneless, meat only, raw | 300 kcal | 56.3 g |
| butter beans | 400 g | FDC 175204Beans, white, mature seeds, cannedFoodData Central has no record for tinned butter beans, which are mature lima beans. Calculated as tinned white beans, the closest tinned bean it records; the two are close in energy and protein, but your tin's label is the exact figure. | 456 kcal | 29.0 g |
| parsley | 10 g | FDC 170416Parsley, fresh | 4 kcal | 0.3 g |
| Whole recipe | Divided by 2 | 1013 kcal | 94.3 g |
Per serving the energy is rounded to the nearest 5 kcal, grams to the nearest whole gram and sodium to the nearest 10 mg. Ingredients marked “Not calculated” are excluded and could add at most 2 kcal to the whole recipe. Calculation method 1.0, September 2026. How the calculation works.
Storage and reheating
- In the fridge
- Cool it quickly, cover and refrigerate within 2 hours. The FDA chart gives soups and stews 3 to 4 days. Better on the second day. The beans absorb the broth, so add stock when you reheat.
- In the freezer
- The same chart gives soups and stews 2 to 3 months in the freezer for best quality.
- Reheating
- Reheat until it reaches 74°C / 165°F, steaming hot throughout, stirring so it heats evenly.
Checked against US Food and Drug Administration, Refrigerator and Freezer Storage Chart, USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, Leftovers and Food Safety, FoodSafety.gov, Safe Minimum Internal Temperatures and FoodSafety.gov, Cold Food Storage Chart. UK guidance from the Food Standards Agency is shorter, at two days for most leftovers.
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About 50 min · 345 kcal · 20 g protein per serving
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