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Nothing beats a big bowl of hearty soup on a chilly evening. This Turkey and Wild Rice Soup is packed with protein, high in fiber, and easy to prepare. It’s a great way to use any leftover holiday turkey, too!
Soup is the ideal dinner for winter because of how easy it is to make and how effortlessly delicious it is. This turkey wild rice soup recipe is the perfect way to use up any leftover turkey after Thanksgiving. It also has carrots, celery, and mushrooms, so it’s loaded with veggies along with the high-fiber wild rice. If you love wild rice, you’re going to love this soup.
If you like healthy recipes made with Thanksgiving leftovers, you will love my turkey stuffed acorn squash and turkey enchilada soup!
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- Perfect for Thanksgiving Leftovers: The last thing you feel like doing after Thanksgiving is cooking complicated meals. This soup is a great way to use your leftover turkey without dedicating a lot of time to cooking.
- High Protein and Fiber Soup: This low-calorie turkey soup is high in protein from the turkey and has a lot of fiber from the wild rice, so it’s nutritionally balanced.
- One Pot, Low-Effort Meal: One of the best things about soup is that there aren’t a lot of dishes! This easy soup comes together in one big pot, so you don’t have a lot to clean.
Table of Contents
Ingredients
- Turkey: If you don’t have leftover turkey, you can make a turkey breast in the Instant Pot and use that in the soup instead.
- Vegetables: Carrots and celery add a bit of sweetness, color, and depth of flavor to the soup. Mushrooms have a deep umami flavor that perfectly complements the other ingredients.
- Wild Rice: This grain has an earthy and nutty flavor and is higher in protein and fiber than regular rice. You can also use it to make my wild rice casserole.
- Chicken Broth: Use a low-sodium chicken broth or vegetable broth as the stock for this soup. You could also use a homemade turkey stock or bone broth is great for adding more protein.
- Seasonings: Bring out all of the flavors in the soup by using Italian seasoning and poultry seasoning. These seasoning blends contain sage, thyme, rosemary, basil, oregano, and parsley.
See the recipe card below for exact ingredient amounts, nutritional information, and detailed instructions.
Variations & Dietary Modifications
- Thicken Without Flour: If you’d like to skip using gluten-free flour to thicken the soup, you can use blended cauliflower rice or cream instead. This chicken pot pie soup recipe has great directions for using blended cauliflower.
- Try a Different Grain: Instead of wild rice, you can make this soup with brown rice, lentils, or barley, quinoa, which are also higher in protein and fiber than other grains.
- Add More Veggies: Toss in some more vegetables like lima beans, zucchini, green beans, or kale to get even more veggies packed into dinner.
- Use a Different Protein: You can make this soup with chicken as well, or use my recipe for chicken wild rice soup instead.
How to Make Turkey Wild Rice Soup
Wild rice and turkey soup is a warm and cozy dinner that’s easy to prepare on a chilly night. The soup only requires one pot for cooking, so cleanup is a breeze. It’s the perfect way to use leftover Thanksgiving turkey, too!
Step 1: Sauté the Aromatics. Heat a bit of olive oil in the bottom of a 5-quart pot over medium heat. Then add the carrots, celery, and onions, and saute them for 7-8 minutes.
Step 2: Add the Other Ingredients. Stir the flour into the cooked vegetables. Then pour in the broth, wild rice, seasonings, and turkey. Bring the soup to a boil, add the mushrooms, reduce the heat to a medium-low simmer, and cover it. Let the soup simmer for 20 minutes, and then it’s ready to enjoy with some pumpkin cornbread on the side.
Expert Tips
- Release the Flavors of the Aromatics: The combination of carrots, celery, and onion is called mirepoix in French cooking. It’s popular to sauté them for soups and stews to create a deep flavor foundation.
- Cook the Wild Rice Separately: The wild rice cooks in the soup as it absorbs the broth. If you find it absorbs too much broth and is too mushy, you can cook it separately and then stir the cooked rice into the soup with the mushrooms.
- Make Your Own Broth: If you’re using leftover turkey for your turkey wild rice soup, you can make your own broth from the carcass. Remove most of the meat, then place the bones and what meat is left in a stock pot with onions, carrots, and celery. Cover the carcass with water and bring it to a boil. Then reduce the heat and let it simmer for 3 hours. Strain out the vegetables, meat, and bones using a fine mesh strainer and store the broth in airtight containers in the refrigerator for 5 days or freeze them for up to 3 months.
- Storing: Store leftovers in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 7 days. You can also freeze leftovers for 3 months, just be sure the soup is completely cool before storing it in the freezer.
Serving Suggestions
Nothing beats a hearty bowl of soup when it’s chilly outside! This leftover turkey wild rice soup is a great way to use your holiday leftovers without a lot of extra hassle. Make soup for lunch or dinner and enjoy with leftover rolls. This soup feels like a warm hug and everyone will love eating leftovers in a different way!
- Soup and bread is a classic combination. Try any of my healthy bread recipes to pair with your turkey soup, like my healthy cauliflower bread or gluten-free honey oat bread.
- Since this turkey and rice soup is so filling, it goes great with a light salad. A butternut squash salad or kale salad has a similar holiday flavor and isn’t heavy.
- If you want to eat more veggies, but don’t want to add them to the soup, try these roasted winter vegetables instead.
Recipe FAQs
This is a great recipe for your crockpot! All you need to do is add all of the ingredients to your slow cooker and let it cook on low for 6-8 hours.
Yes, you can make soup in a hurry by adding it to the Instant Pot. Add all of the ingredients and cook it under pressure for 30 minutes, then do a quick release of the pressure and serve!
The wild rice will absorb a lot of the broth as the soup cooks. If it absorbs too much, the soup may become thick. You can thin it by adding more broth, or cook the wild rice separately so it’s not as absorbent.
Reheat individual bowls of the soup in the microwave in 60-second intervals and stir every minute to ensure it heats evenly. You can also reheat leftovers in a saucepan on the stove. You may need to add water or broth to thin out the soup since the rice absorbs more liquid in the refrigerator.
More Delicious Healthy Soup Recipes
If you tried this Turkey and Wild Rice Soup recipe or any other recipe on my website, please leave a 🌟 star rating and let me know how you go in the 📝 comments below.
Turkey and Wild Rice Soup
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- 1 cup Carrots, chopped
- 1 cup Celery, diced
- ⅔ cup White Onion, diced
- 3 tablespoons Garlic, minced
- 2 tablespoons Oat Flour, or gluten free oat flour or whole wheat flour
- 1 ½ lb Turkey
- 1 cup Wild Rice, dry and uncooked
- 6 cups Chicken Broth, no sodium added
- ½ teaspoon Poultry Seasoning
- 1 tablespoon Italian Seasoning
- 1 cup Mushrooms, sliced
- Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Add the olive oil, carrots, garlic, celery and onions to a 5-quart pot. Bring to medium heat and sauté 7-8 minutes.
- Once the veggies are soft, add the flour and stir it in with the veggies. Add the broth, wil rice, seasonings and turkey. Bring the pot to a boil then cover, add the mushrooms and reduce to a medium-low simmer. Stir and for 20 minutes then serve!
Notes
- If your soup is too thick you can cook the wild rice separately then stir it into the soup so it doesn’t absorb too much of your broth.
- Cook this soup in the crock pot on Low for 6-8 hours instead of on the stove.
- Make your own broth by simmering a leftover turkey carcass with carrots, celery, onions, and herbs for 3 hours. Then strain out the bones and veggies and store the broth for soups and stews.
- Store the turkey soup in the refrigerator for 7 days or in the freezer up to 3 months.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
This recipe is a keeper! The next time I would use less wild rice and precook it because cooking it in the soup used up most of the broth. I’d also add more mushrooms and I’d add sliced zucchini.