Light & Creamy Roasted Poblano Chicken Soup is a surprisingly healthy dinner full of bold flavor and spice from roasted poblano peppers, onion, carrots and tender chicken, then finished off with pepitas for a delicious crunch!
Light & Creamy Roasted Poblano Chicken Soup
Recently I started trying a new meal delivery service called Hello Fresh. It is a service where you pick three meals for the week and they send you all of the ingredients to make those meals with the recipe right to your door. Most of their meals are on the healthier side, so this is a great way for me to stay on track with healthy eating on those nights where I just don’t have the ambition to plan and shop for a full meal.
This yummy soup came to fruition when I received a poblano pepper in my Hello Fresh box last week. It belonged to a chili recipe, but as soon as I saw it I knew I had to steal it away from the chili box and create something special with it just for you guys. I needed to make a healthy lunch to pack for work for the week, so a soup seemed like the perfect option.
You might be wondering why I got so excited over a poblano pepper, seeing most of you have easy access to them. I sadly do not have any access to them! In my small town, there are no poblano peppers to be found at the grocery stores. Therefore, when I got my hands on one, it needed to be put to good use. For the chili recipe I just swapped out some jalapeno peppers.
I halved the pepper and tossed it on a pan with a few carrots and lots of onions as well as some chicken breasts. I tossed everything with a little bit of olive oil and seasoning and then popped it in the oven to roast it all up. The chicken breasts came out nice and juicy and the vegetables were all roasted to perfection.
All of the vegetables were added to some chicken stock and a little bit of light cream cheese and pureed using an immersion blender until smooth and creamy. The chicken was then shredded and added to the mix. Let it simmer for 10 minutes and finish it off with some crunchy pepitas for a rich and delicious soup you can feel good about!
Light & Creamy Roasted Poblano Chicken Soup
Equipment
Ingredients
- 1 poblano pepper halved
- 1 medium carrots chopped
- 1 large yellow onion roughly chopped
- 1 Tbsp. + 1 tsp. olive oil
- salt & pepper to taste
- 1 lb. boneless skinless chicken breasts I used thick breasts about 8 oz. each. If you use smaller breasts, reduce the amount of time you bake the chicken to 20-25 minutes.
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1/4 tsp. chipotle powder may substitute with chili powder or omit if you prefer less spice
- 1 tsp. cumin
- 5 c. chicken broth
- 4 oz. reduced fat cream cheese
- 1/4 c. salted pepitas for garnish
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400°.
- Add all of the vegetables to a cookie sheet and toss with 1 Tbsp. olive oil. Top the vegetables with the chicken breasts and season everything with salt & pepper. Bake at 400° for 30 minutes.
- Meanwhile in a large kettle, saute 1 tsp. olive oil with the garlic, chipotle powder and cumin for 1 minute. Add 2 c. chicken broth and bring to a simmer.
- Remove the roasted vegetables and chicken from the oven and allow the chicken to cool for 5 minutes.
- Roughly chop the poblano pepper and add it to the kettle with the carrots, onions and cream cheese. Using an immersion blender, blend the mixture for 3-4 minutes until it is smooth.
- Using two forks, shred the chicken into bite-sized pieces. Add the chicken to the blended mixture along with the remaining chicken stock. Simmer for 10 minutes.
- Serve hot garnished with salted pepitas.
Jane says
This is one of our favorite soups!
Danielle Green says
Happy to hear you enjoy it so much!
Avonelle @ CentisbleMe.com says
This looks so good I can practically taste it! I love that you came up with this because of the inspiration from one pepper!
I pinned it to my Food Bloggers Coalition group board, as well as my personal soup board. Thank you for sharing!
Danielle Green says
Thanks so much Avonelle!
Julie Evink says
Mmmm I wish I had a bowl of this yummy soup at work today to warm up with!