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
Slow cooker chicken, white bean and kale stew
A Tuscan-style stew of chicken, white beans, tomato and kale, made in a slow cooker or a pressure cooker and finished with parmesan. Brothy and soft, it is an easy bowl to finish on a day when a plated dinner feels like too much.
By The foodose editorial team. Nutrition calculated from USDA FoodData Central. Checked on paper on 16 October 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 chicken breasts reach 74°C in 4 hours on LOW and after 10 minutes at high pressure with a 10 minute natural release
- Confirm one mashed ladleful of beans thickens the broth enough
- Photograph the finished bowl
- Time
- About 4 hr 30 min
- estimated
- Serves
- 4
- see below
- Energy
- 460 kcal
- per serving
- Protein
- 49 g
- per serving
Ingredients for 4 servings
Check off ingredients as you go.
Contains celery, milk. Check the labels on packaged ingredients:
- chopped tomatoes. Tinned tomatoes vary in added salt; the sodium figure uses a standard salted tin.
- chicken stock. Stock often contains celery, and sometimes gluten or soya; check the label.
- Parmesan. Parmigiano Reggiano is made with animal rennet, so it is not vegetarian. Vegetarian Italian-style hard cheeses are widely sold.
Cooking steps
Dice the onion, carrots and celery into 1 cm pieces. Warm the oil in a frying pan over medium heat, or in the pressure cooker on Sauté, and cook them for 8 minutes until the onion is soft, adding the sliced garlic and the rosemary for the last minute.
Slow cooker: tip the softened onion, carrots and celery into the pot with the white beans, the tomatoes and the stock. Push the whole chicken breasts under the liquid, cover and cook on LOW for 4 to 5 hours or HIGH for 2 to 3 hours, until the thickest breast reads 74°C.
Cooked when: 74°C / 165°F in the thickest part. A food thermometer is the reliable way to tell.
Pressure cooker: pour the stock over the softened onion, carrots and celery and scrape the base clean, add the white beans and the chicken, then pour the tomatoes on top without stirring. Seal, cook at high pressure for 10 minutes, let the pressure release naturally for 10 minutes, then quick release the rest. The thickest breast should read 74°C.
Cooked when: 74°C / 165°F in the thickest part. A food thermometer is the reliable way to tell.
Lift out the chicken, shred it with two forks and return it to the pot. Strip the kale from its stems, tear it into bite-sized pieces and stir it in. Give it 15 minutes on HIGH with the lid on in the slow cooker, or 3 minutes on Sauté in the pressure cooker, until tender.
Press a ladleful of the white beans against the side of the pot with the back of a spoon and stir them through to thicken the broth. Add the lemon juice and serve with the parmesan finely grated over each bowl.
The useful detail
Mash a ladleful of the beans into the broth at the end. Their starch thickens the stew in a minute, without flour, cream or an hour of reducing, which a covered slow cooker cannot do anyway. The kale goes in last for the same reason the beans are mashed late: it stays green and holds its shape.
Make it work for you
One serving is A deep bowl, about a quarter of the pot, with parmesan on top. 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.
Butter beans instead of white beans
Larger and creamier; they mash into the broth even more readily.
Per serving: about the same energy, about the same protein, about the same fat.
Spinach instead of kale
Softer and quicker. Stir it in for the last 2 minutes only.
Per serving: about 5 kcal less, about the same protein, about the same fat.
Turkey breast instead of chicken
A little firmer. Same times.
Per serving: about 10 kcal less, about 2 g more protein, about 2 g less 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 brothy bowl where chicken and white beans share the protein, and the beans, kale and vegetables carry the fibre.
| Energy | 460 kcal |
|---|---|
| Protein | 49 g |
| Fat | 11 g |
| of which saturates | 3 g |
| Carbohydrate | 41 g |
| of which sugars | 8 g |
| Fibre | 11 g |
| Sodium | 1,480 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 4. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| olive oil | 14 g | FDC 171413Oil, olive, salad or cooking | 121 kcal | 0.0 g |
| onion | 150 g | FDC 170000Onions, raw | 60 kcal | 1.7 g |
| carrot | 150 g | FDC 170393Carrots, raw | 62 kcal | 1.4 g |
| celery sticks | 100 g | FDC 169988Celery, raw | 14 kcal | 0.7 g |
| garlic | 15 g | FDC 169230Garlic, raw | 22 kcal | 1.0 g |
| fresh rosemary | 0.5 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 breast | 600 g | FDC 171077Chicken, broiler or fryers, breast, skinless, boneless, meat only, raw | 720 kcal | 135.0 g |
| white beans | 480 g | FDC 175204Beans, white, mature seeds, canned | 547 kcal | 34.8 g |
| chopped tomatoes | 400 g | FDC 170051Tomatoes, red, ripe, canned, packed in tomato juice | 64 kcal | 3.2 g |
| chicken stock | 790 g | FDC 174536Soup, chicken broth, ready-to-serve | 47 kcal | 5.1 g |
| kale | 150 g | FDC 168421Kale, raw | 53 kcal | 4.4 g |
| lemon juice | 15 g | FDC 167747Lemon juice, raw | 3 kcal | 0.1 g |
| Parmesan | 30 g | FDC 170848Cheese, parmesan, hard | 118 kcal | 10.7 g |
| Whole recipe | Divided by 4 | 1831 kcal | 197.9 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. It thickens as it stands; loosen it with a splash of water when reheating, and add the parmesan when you serve.
- 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.
Try another recipe
Butternut, white bean and sage soup
Roasted squash and white beans blended into a smooth sage soup.
About 50 min · 345 kcal · 20 g protein per serving
Vegetarian