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Making this Rotisserie Chicken Soup with rice is quick and easy. It’s the perfect weeknight meal that the whole family will love. This is my favorite soup to make on cold winter days.
If you’re looking for more healthy soup recipes, you’ll want to try my Minestrone Recipe, Cream of Chicken Replacement and Wild Rice Mushroom Soup.
Why I Love This Rotisserie Soup
I love this Rotisserie Chicken Soup because it’s easy, comforting, and packed with flavor — especially with the shortcut of using salsa. It’s flexible enough for the Instant Pot, slow cooker, or stovetop, and using the chicken bones adds extra richness. This is one of those simple, nourishing meals I keep coming back to.
Enjoy!
– Becca
Ingredients in Rotisserie Soup with Rice
See the recipe card for full information on ingredients and quantities.
- Rotisserie chicken: Once I learned how to make rotisserie chicken at home, I stopped buying it at the stores. Using homemade rotisserie chicken in your soup gives more control over flavor and quality — and the bones from your chicken become a rich base for broth.
- Chicken stock: You can use a homemade broth recipe or buy store bought. If you aren’t making your own, choose low-sodium chicken stock.
- Brown rice: Use dry rice for the Instant Pot. For the stovetop or slow cooker, use cooked rice.
How to make Rotisserie Soup in the Instant Pot
Step 1: To start, pull the meat from the rotisserie chicken and chop it into bite sized pieces.
Step 2: Next, add the meat, bones, and skin to the Instant Pot. I grouped the bones and skin on one side of the Instant Pot so that they were easier to remove later – you could also use a mesh bag for the bones and such, it’ll be easier to pull out later.
The bones are important–they add a depth of flavor that just isn’t there with regular chicken meat. You’ll remove the bones and skin later.
Step 3: Finally, pour the rest of the ingredients into the Instant Pot. Close the lid and turn the pressure valve to sealing.
Cook on high pressure using the soup setting for 25 minutes. If you’re using white rice, you can reduce the cooking time for 4 minutes.
Step 4: When the cooking time is done, you can either let the pressure release on its own (natural release), or gently release it by slightly turning the valve open, then closing it again (multiple times). Doing this slowly helps prevent hot soup from spraying out, which happens sometimes during a quick release.
Remove the bones and skin from the pot with a large slotted spoon, and serve the soup. Garnish with chopped avocado, cilantro, chopped green onions, tortilla strips or cheese.
Recipe Tips
- If you want less fat in your broth, leave out the skin and just use the bones. You’ll still get a rich, flavorful, and nutritious broth.
- Store any leftover soup in an airtight container in the fridge, and reheat when you’re ready to eat. To freeze it, use freezer-safe containers. Add fresh toppings after you reheat the soup.
Rotisserie Soup FAQs
Yes! I love the flexibility of being about to use store bought or homemade rotisserie chicken for this flavorful soup.
I love making chicken noodle soup with rotisserie chicken. To make chicken noodle soup, leave out the rice in this recipe and add uncooked noodles to the slow cooker or stovetop about 30 minutes before the soup is done. If you’re cooking in the Instant Pot, your cook time will be 4 minutes.
You sure can! You can use a rotisserie chicken in place of the turkey carcass in this recipe to make homemade chicken broth.
Healthy Eating Plans
21 Day Fix Containers
- Serving Size: 1 1/2 cups chicken and veggies, 1 cup broth
- Entire recipe: 6 red containers, 4 1/2 green containers, 1 yellow container
- Per Serving (about 3/4 cup of chicken): 1 1/2 Red container, 1 Green container, 1/4 Yellow container
Weight Watchers Points
3 2025 Plan Points
2B Mindset
This recipe is the perfect lunch!
Soup, Stew, and Chili Recipes
If you tried this recipe for Rotisserie Chicken Soup or any other recipe on my site please leave a rating and let me know how it went in the comments!
Instant Pot Rotisserie Chicken Soup
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Equipment
- Instant Pot 6 qt
- Crockpot
- Le Creuset Cast Iron Pot
Ingredients
- 1 whole chicken meat only
- 64 ounces chicken broth low sodium, or if you're fancy and you make your own, 64 oz.
- 2 cups zucchini diced small
- 1 cup carrots diced small
- 1 tsp black pepper
- ½ cup brown rice (dry for IP, cooked for stovetop or Crockpot)
- 1.5 cups salsa
Instructions
Instant Pot:
- Pull the meat from the rotisserie chicken and chop it into bite sized pieces. 1 whole chicken
- Add the meat, bones, and skin to the Instant Pot. I grouped the bones and skin on one size of the Instant Pot so that they were easier to remove later.
- Pour the rest of the ingredients into the Instant Pot. Close the lid and turn the pressure valve to sealing. Remember to use dry rice when cooking in the Instant Pot. 64 ounces chicken broth, 2 cups zucchini, 1 cup carrots, 1 tsp black pepper, 1/2 cup brown rice , 1.5 cups salsa
- Cook on high pressure using the soup setting for 25 minutes. When the Instant Pot is done cooking let the pressure release naturally or release the pressure by turning the valve a little then closing it again. This will release a little pressure at a time and prevent the soup from shooting out of the valve.
- Remove the bone and skin from the pot and serve the soup. Garnish with chopped avocado, cilantro, tortilla strips or cheese.
Stove Top:
- Pour the chicken stock and salsa into a stock pot on low heat. 1 whole chicken, 1.5 cups salsa
- Cook the carrots and zucchini in 1 tbsp of olive oil for 5-10 minutes 1 cup carrots, 2 cups zucchini
- Next, pull the chicken off of the bone. I put it all on a cutting board and then cut the meat into smaller pieces before putting it all into the pot. The skin, bones, drumsticks, and wings all go into the pot. Please don’t skip that step. It adds a lot of moisture and, most importantly, taste. This bone broth will have more health benefits and better flavor. Win-win! 1 whole chicken
- Add the pepper, and the veggies when they're done. 1 tsp black pepper
- Add the rice. Cooked rice is needed here! 1/2 cup brown rice
- Let it simmer (slow boil) on the stove for an hour. Or two. Or three.
- When it’s time to eat, use tongs to pull out the skin and bones. I fill the bowl with everything but broth at first and add cheese on top. After the cheese has a few seconds to melt, I add the broth on top
- Garnish with chopped avocado, flour tortilla strips, or both!
Slow Cooker:
- First, pull the meat from the rotisserie chicken and chop it into bite sized pieces.
- Next, add chicken meat, bones, and skin to the slow cooker. I grouped the bones and skin on one side of the slow cooker so that they were easier to remove later.
- Then pour the rest of the ingredients to the slow cooker.
- Finally place the lid on the slow cooker. Cook the soup on high heat for 2-3 hours or low heat for 4-6 hours.
- When it’s time to eat, remove the bones and skin from the pot and serve the soup. Garnish with chopped avocado, cilantro, tortilla strips or cheese. You can add salt and pepper at the end, to taste.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
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Hi, I made this soup in my instant pot tonite and I just wanted to tell you how much I love it!! It has so much flavor. Even my dogs loved it, i let them lick the bowl…my only problem, my rotisserie chicken carcass fell apart during cooking and the bones ended up everywhere. Any tips or suggestions for future? I definitely am making this again!
Yay!! This makes me so happy! They have bags you can buy, mesh or cheesecloth ones, that contain the bones–I’d try that!
Thank you for this great recipe. I really enjoyed it. I substituted the brown rice with hulled barley. I had cooked a couple of chickens in my IP yesterday and planned to use one of them to make this recipe. So glad it turned out well.
I’m so glad you liked it! This is one of our favorites!
I am cooking this now. Since it serves 6 I added 3 yellow container portions of cooked rice. That way, when I divide it I have 1/2 yellow container per serving. This worked best since I wasn’t planning on adding cheese or tortilla strips to my soup. I will add avocado as a topping and probably squirt some lemon juice into it (I love lemon in all my broth soups). I like that the salsa kind of takes the place of having to chop onion and garlic. It smells heavenly up in here. Side note. . .when reading this recipe there is a tendency to just take the breast meat. Harvest all the meat. Grocery store rotisserie chickens are small. If you get a Sams Club or Costco roasted chicken, feel free to just use the breast. Those things are HUGE.
Great soup! I flipped the order of instructions. I put only the stock in the pot first and the “yucky” chicken bones and skin and let them cook while I finished cutting up the chicken and cooking the veggies. Then I just dumped it through a strainer, poured the stock back in the pot, and finished the recipe.
The recipe says cooked rice. Is it supposed to be uncooked? I can’t imagine only a quarter cup of cooked rice proportioned with the larger quantities of everything else.
You can definitely change the amount to what works best for you!
Hello! Does the rice go in cooked and then I simmer it for a couple hours? I just want to make sure I’m clear. I cannot wait to try this tonight!! It is cold here in North Florida.
Hello! I use the Minute Rice and put it in for a few hours, or if I need it faster I use cooked rice. It’s chilly here in Arizona too! I hope this warms you up!
Becca
Could you please tell me what containers you use to portion this recipe? How it relates to the 21 Day Fix?
Thank you!
Hi Jeanne! Yes! Look at #2 here: https://mycrazygoodlife.com/21-day-fix-dinner-recipes/
But what about the brown rice? What number of yellows do you count that as?
Depending on how much brown rice you add, you could could it as 1/4 or 1/2 yellow container.
For 1.5 cup filling & 1 cup broth is it 1.5 R, 4 G and 1/4 Y??? 4 G seems like a lot.
Thank you! We are excited to try this tonight!
OMG good catch–I’m sorry about that! I’ve just changed it–it should be 1G per serving :)
no garlic or onion?