One Pot Chicken Enchilada Soup
Updated: 1 day ago
Some recipes earn their place. This soup is a standard in my house — the one that gets asked for, the one that reheats like a dream, and the one I point to when somebody tells me low sodium must mean bland.
It's also proof that canned goods aren't the enemy. The labels are. Made the usual way — regular broth, regular canned beans and tomatoes — a bowl like this can run past 800mg of sodium without anybody noticing. Mine comes in at 100mg a serving, and nobody at my table has ever missed the rest.
The swaps that do the work
Unsalted broth — not just "low sodium." A broth that says "low sodium" can still run about 140mg a cup. Unsalted (I use Swanson) is 35mg a cup. That one word on the carton is worth about 70mg in every bowl.
No-salt-added beans and tomatoes. Regular canned beans and tomatoes bring hundreds of milligrams before you've seasoned a thing. The no-salt-added cans bring almost none. (If you can find Muir Glen's no-salt-added fire-roasted diced tomatoes, those are the gold — I order them by the case.)
Unsalted butter, because it should go without saying by now.
Cheese is a garnish, not an ingredient. It isn't counted in the numbers below, on purpose: a little cheddar on top is a choice, and low-salt Swiss is the smaller hit if you want it — or no garnish at all.
The recipe
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This one usually lives in the Instant Pot at my house, because it's so easy to do — everything in, lid on, and the chicken shreds like it was born to. On a slow day it goes in the slow cooker instead — 6 to 8 hours on low, or 4 to 6 on high if the day gets away from you. Same soup, same swaps, just a longer, lazier road to dinner. Low and slow is best for good flavors. (The original recipe I started from was a stovetop soup; I never make it that way, so the stove steps didn't make the trip.)
Nutrition (per serving, before toppings)
270 cal · fat 5g · saturated 2g · cholesterol 40mg · sodium 100mg · carbs 32g · fiber 7g · sugars 8g · protein 23g
Potassium ~645mg · Phosphorus ~210mg
A potassium note, cook to cook: those beans make this soup potassium-rich, which is fine at my table — but if you restrict potassium, this isn't your soup, and that's worth knowing before you ladle. We're cooks, not doctors — check with yours about what's right for you.
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