Jamaican chicken soup recipe
Jamaican chicken soup is on the menu today! Nothing beats this hearty chicken soup dish it is full of flavour and very filling that you won’t need any sides.
Fridays or Saturdays are Jamaicans soup days. I don’t always stick to the soup days.
There are other days that I might feel like having soup, especially when I am feeling sick.
Soups goes down well when you have the cold or flu.
Jamaican soups are cooked with a lot of vegetables and ground provisions in it.
This makes our soup very filling and we eat it as a full meal.
The provisions that you need to make this chicken soup are pumpkin, yellow yam, carrot, cho cho (chayote) and corn.
Related Recipes:
If you like potato you can include it.
You will also need the chicken, the seasoning (thyme, onion, garlic, pimento, scalllion, scotch bonnet pepper) and a soup mix.
Another thing, Jamaican soup isn’t complete if it doesn’t have dumplings in it.
It would feel strange to a Jamaican to have soup without dumplings.
Dumpling is plain four mixed with with water to form a firm dough.
Even though I add salt to the ingredients below, I personally do not add it when I am making if for myself.
But I notice that a lot of people finds boiled dumpling that is cooked without salt to taste a bit bland.
Most time I would add a bit of cornmeal to the flour to switch things up. Give that a try and see how you like it compare to the plain flour.
How To Make Jamaican Chicken Soup From Scratch?
Step 1. Wash the chicken in lime juice and water.
Step 2. Place the chicken in a large soup pot along with the pimento (allspice), scallion, thyme, garlic, onion, corn and salt.
Add enough boiling water to cover the food in the pot and put to cook for five to ten minutes.
Step 3. Add the pumpkin. I never peel my pumpkin but you can.
Step 4. Add the yam, cho cho (chayote), carrots and the dumplings. Add more boiling water to cover all the food in the pot.
Step 5. Add the soup mix. The soup mix tends to form lumps when you pour it in the soup straight from the pack.
So whenever I am using it I would mix it with a little bit of boiling water in a little bowl before pouring it into the soup.
Step 6. Add a whole scotch bonnet pepper and cover the pot and let it cook for about 20-30 minutes are until all the food in the pot is fully cooked.
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Jamaican chicken soup recipe
Ingredients
Method
- Clean the chicken the way you do it. Place the chicken in a large soup pot with 2 cups of boiling water, the pimento berries, salt, minced garlic and chopped onion. Bring to a boil, then add half the pumpkin. (Make sure this portion of pumpkin is chopped very small so that it cooks easily.)
- Once the pumpkin is cooked, crush it with a fork. (If you have a hand blender, cook the pumpkin and blend it out before adding the chicken, pimento berries and onion. I did it the old-fashioned way.) Add the corn.
- Add more water. Chop the corn into three pieces and add to the pot
- Mix the flour, cornmeal, and salt (if using), then gradually add water until a stiff dough forms. Separate the dough into very small pieces and make round flat dumplings. Add then to the soup pot.
- Add the rest of the water, the chopped yellow yam, turnip, carrot, dasheen, coco and the remaining pumpkin.
- Stir in the soup mix. You may want to sieve it as I did, before adding it to the pot. To avoid plumbing, mix the soup mix with a little of your soup broth before adding it to the pot.
- Add the scallion, thyme and scotch bonnet pepper. Cover the pot, bring to a boil, then turn the heat to medium-low and cook for 20-25 minutes, or until all the vegetables are cooked.
- Stir occasionally to stop the food from sticking to the bottom of the pot and burning. Midway, taste the soup and add more salt if needed.
Nutrition
Notes
- Turnip or Chocho: I was unable to find chocho at the market, but I did find turnip, so I used that. The choice is not either or. You could use one or both.
- Coco: Coco (pronounced coca-ko) is what Jamaicans call eddoes—similar to dasheen but not the same.
- Salt: I used Pink Himalayan salt. If you like your food with a bit more salt, you make want to use 1/2 tsp more salt.
Great job!
I’m so grateful to you for sharing your recipe. I visit Negril every year..except since COVID. I always stay with the locals (no resorts) unless owned by Jamaicans. Annnddd let me tell you that I’m Jamaican at heart. The people, food, the culture but mostly the experience. So thank you for giving me something that makes me feel like I’m there all over again!!
Very Great website. Recipes and pictures. Bravo!
Thank you so much for sharing this!
Amazing
Thank you
Wow this was awesome ,went to the local Spanish store and got coco and a lot of ground food and added it . Wow 🤩 $17 later a big pot of soup.
This is so good! I’ve made it a few times now, and I could eat it everyday 🤗😍😉
Me too tastes so good
Make sure the stem is on that scotch bonnet pepper ( word to the wise)
Someone please share how you get the right consistency for your dumplings. Also, what soup mix do you use? I can’t wait to try the recipe!
Add the water bit by bit to a cup of plain flour and mix/kneed into a firm consistency. I use a packet of chicken noodle soup and cock soup for extra flour 😋
Absolutely! The flavors are awesome. I also added tumeric for the health benefits. But that cock flavoring is like wow!
Turmeric will gives it more colour too.
I used Grace chicken soup and Grace cock soup mix … this was a easy to follow recipe( that it came out good on the first try) and it tasted so good…
Excellence recipe thank you.
I used two boxes of chicken stock, two ears of corn, and celery. Delicious 🤤!!
Hi Lesa,
I tried out this recipe in two consecutive days. (alot of my family were sick these last days)
Once with my own instant chicken soup mix and secondly with a vegetarian type as they didn’t have any halaal ready made packs.
Both times soup came out quiet well, but it was missing a rounded flavour. I put coconut cream in both my soup and it notched up the flavour by 30%. It also looked more like your picture. Thank you for the recipe, I really enjoyed cooking it and it was really full on flavour too.
Yes, coconut milk will work in this recipe. Glad you tried it and liked it.
Thank you. When you haven’t cooked something in a long time but fancy it, It’s great the have a page like this to refer too. 🙂 Thanks again.
🙂 👍🏽
This recipe was so easy to follow. Best soup I ever made ☺️
Simply delicious! Add some coconut cream for extra flavour and body. But not too much…😋
Absolutely delicious meal!
It was perfect. Thank you for sharing.
This is the best soup I ever made. I added a pinch
or 2 of Masala powder, plus cooked it in my trusty crockpot. So good!! Thank you for sharing..Blessings to you..
Family loved it! 😁 Thank you
This soup was delicious. I did not have a Pumpkin so I substituted and used pumpkin flavored soup mix and it great out great!
Thank for this easy recipe it came out get !
Hello.
Absolutely delicious!
Kind regards
Janet
I made your chicken soup 2day but missed the bit about mixing the soup mix in a bowl
My chicken soup was a 9 out of 10 because I didn’t have no chow chow..
Lovely easy how to guide just like my partners mom makes
Thank you for sharing this recipe, tastes absolutely amazing!!
Thank you for sharing this recipe. Soap is so yummy.
Made this soup and my family loved. It’s so flavorful and deliciously comforting.
It was delicious thanks for the Recipe x
Thank you for the recipe! I tried making this and followed the recipe to the best of my abilities with the exact ingredients, but the soup colour was more transparent brown, not creamy orange like the picture. Am I missing something? Do I need to use coconut cream? Blend the pumpkin into a puree? Boil the pumpkin until it dissolves?
Hey! Did you skim the top of the soup as it was cooking? Did you clean the chicken well? How did you make it? Did you add a lot of all spice or something brown to it? Mine was a darker color before I skimmed the top and some of the thyme and oil and the scum on top and it was much brighter than I even intended
This is my go-to soup recipe, I remember the ingredients but never the steps. Thank you for breaking it down so easily that anyone can follow. I’ve made it using your recipe about 4 times (today included) and its tasty every time (I always use an extra soup mix, just to add extra flavour and I substitute yam and cho-cho for Irish potato – the cost of living in Scotland unfortunately).
Danielle, glad to here the steps helped with you making the soup. Stop by anytime. P.s. sorry to hear cho-cho and yam are so expensive in Scotland,Irish potato is a great substitute
This soup came out just GREAT! I have always wanted to make a hearty Caribbean chicken soup and this recipe exceeded my expectations. It was very easy to make. I added a yellow plantain and it gave it a nice little extra touch! Everyone loved it.
This soup recipe def does not come out this colour. What exactly is the soup mix? Also, when this soup is made, the chicken is usually first breifly boiled to allow the scum to rise and be skimmed off – this is very important in Jamaican kitchens
Loved this recipe. Simplist way to make this hearty and delicious soup
Gorgeous
It was so many years since I’d cooked soup that I wanted a recipe to make sure I was on the right track. This is the second or third time I’ve followed the recipe and it’s alwaus compliments all round. So delicious!
Glad the recipe helped guide you and the soup turned out good.
Came back to send recipe to a friend. A staple in my house for the past couple years. My parents made me teach them. Grace soup mix is always on hand now. May not be traditional but I love semi ripe plantain in mine & opt out of pumpkin. Also to make the soup different the second day if you have two days worth, coconut milk is delicious in it. Thank you thank you for this!
Amazing soup. Tried it for the first time and it was perfect. I’m sure it would’ve made my mother-in-law proud❤️
Love it
Delicious. Family loved it
Could add green banana.
Came out so delicious! The pumpkin cooked out and blended in so well with the broth!!! Delicious!!!
Thank you so much for sharing this recipe ❤️
It was delicious! I already know how to make it, just haven’t fours long time and wanted a quick reference. It did not disappoint! 5/5!
Thanks for the recipe, delicious
This my 1st time doing chicken soup in a very very long time.
Your soup is so nice.
My sons were very happy I made it. It means I’m going to have to do it through these winter months.
Thank you.
Lovely
Delicious!!!! That’s it, not long paragraph. Added the hard food i wanted and skipped the pumpkin.
Delicious!!!! That’s it, not long paragraph. Added the hard food i wanted and skipped the pumpkin.
Great flavor.
Simple easy fast and enjoyed the heck out of it. That’s a lot of appreciation from non soup ppl
awesome detailed description and directions.