What Is Low-Carb Chicken Soup?

Low-carb chicken soup is any soup dish where chicken is the primary ingredient, which is also relatively low in carbohydrates. These sorts of recipes might be helpful for people with type-2 diabetes as well as those on certain weight-loss diets, and the exact number of carbohydrates can potentially vary a lot depending on the needs of the person making the soup. Making a low-carb chicken soup would generally involve avoiding common soup ingredients with higher carbohydrate contents, including pastas, flour, corn, along with sugar and fruits. Other ingredients may be emphasized to make up for the lack of carbohydrates, including vegetables with higher fiber content, especially those that add a lot of flavor to the soup.

Some dieters especially like to eat soups because they have a lot of water content, which can make them lower-calorie. Various types of pasta, along with flour, and starchy foods like corn and potatoes are often a big part of many soup recipes, partly because they can help thicken the broth or make the soups more filling. These foods are generally very high in carbohydrates, which can make it difficult for people on low-carb diets to enjoy soups, even though they may have some major advantages over some other recipes from a dietary perspective.

When someone makes chicken soup, he or she might add pasta or corn to the mix, but for a low-carb chicken soup, a person may focus on other ingredients. For example, things like cabbage, onions, peppers, and celery are often added to low-carb chicken soup in greater quantities than they normally would be. These ingredients are very high in terms of fiber content, which isn’t digested and processed in the same way as other carbohydrates, and many people on lower-carb diets actually subtract all the fiber from the carbohydrate counts in their foods. This means that that these ingredients can add flavor and substance to the soup mix without raising the carbohydrate levels substantially. A chicken soup recipe made in this way could potentially have 10 or fewer grams (0.3 ounces) of fully digestible non-fiber carbohydrates in a serving.

Someone making a low-carb chicken soup may also focus on adding more actual meat to the mix. This will potentially make the soup more filling, correcting a potential problem with low-carb soup recipes, since they are often thinner texturally. For people who absolutely need some kind of pasta for their chicken soup, shiratake noodles might be a good answer. For some dieters, these noodles, which usually have very few overall carbohydrates and a high fiber content, can make a good substitute for pasta’s in many recipes, including things like soup and spaghetti.