Broccoli-Chicken Rice Soup

The school is functioning — barely, imperfectly, with the constant anxiety of a system that knows it could be shut down at any moment by a positive test result. I teach my in-person students behind the plexiglass on Monday and Wednesday and my Zoom students on Tuesday and Thursday and Friday is for grading and the kind of existential despair that teachers experience when confronted with the gap between what they want to teach and what the circumstances allow. The gap is enormous this year. I wanted to teach Chekhov. I am teaching survival.

The students are struggling. Not all of them, but enough — enough to notice, enough to worry about, enough to sit me down after class (metaphorically; they sit six feet away) and tell me, in fragments and silences, that things at home are hard. Unemployment. Illness. Loss. I listen. I cannot fix their home lives. I can assign them books that tell the truth about being human, which is that being human is hard and has always been hard and the hardness is not the whole story, because the story also includes love and soup and the stubborn decision to keep reading, to keep showing up, to keep sitting in a classroom (masked, distanced, behind plexiglass) because the classroom is a place where someone cares about what you think, which is not nothing, which is maybe everything.

I made a butternut squash soup — the same one I made last fall, the puréed, creamy, nutmeg-scented one — and brought a thermos of it to school and left it in the faculty lounge with a note: "Eat this. You're doing great. — RF." The thermos was empty by eleven. Three colleagues sent me texts. One said, "You saved my day." I didn't save anyone's day. I made soup. The soup saved the day. The soup always saves the day. That's its job.

The butternut squash soup was already gone by the time I thought to write this down, and I realized I’ve been reaching for the same impulse — make something warm, make a lot of it, leave it somewhere someone will find it — every time the weight of this year gets heavy enough. This broccoli-chicken rice soup is the one I turn to when I need to feed more people than I have time to think about, when the thermos needs to be full by 7 a.m. and the gesture needs to say everything I don’t have words for. It’s creamy without being fussy, substantial without being slow, and it travels exactly the way comfort should: quietly, and in bulk.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 35 minutes | Total Time: 50 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 medium yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 medium carrots, peeled and sliced into coins
3 stalks celery, chopped
6 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 cup long-grain white rice, uncooked
2 cups cooked chicken breast, shredded or diced
3 cups fresh broccoli florets, roughly chopped
1 cup whole milk or half-and-half
1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

Instructions

Sauté aromatics. Melt butter in a large heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the onion, carrots, and celery and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5–7 minutes until softened. Add the garlic and cook 1 minute more until fragrant.
Add broth and rice. Pour in the chicken broth and bring to a boil. Stir in the uncooked rice, thyme, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer for 15 minutes until the rice is nearly tender.
Add chicken and broccoli. Stir in the shredded chicken and broccoli florets. Continue simmering uncovered for 8–10 minutes, until the broccoli is tender and bright green and the rice is fully cooked.
Finish with dairy and cheese. Reduce heat to low. Stir in the milk or half-and-half and shredded cheddar cheese. Stir gently until the cheese is fully melted and the soup is creamy. Do not boil after adding the dairy.
Taste and serve. Adjust seasoning with additional salt and pepper as needed. Ladle into bowls or transfer to a thermos. Serve immediately, or keep warm on the lowest heat setting for up to 30 minutes before serving.

Nutrition (per serving)

Broccoli-Chicken Rice Soup — The Thermos I Left in the Faculty Lounge