Chicken Clear Soup Recipe, Indian Style (2024)

Mildly spiced desi (Indian) style chicken clear soup is an easy, flavorful soup and a comfort food on cold winter days. It tastes wonderful as is or with some rice and also a great home remedy for cold.

Back home, bone soup with mutton is a very common preparation in most households. Chicken bone soup wasn’t common when growing up and I only started making it after coming to the US. Bone soup with chicken is a simple, easy, 20 minutes recipe that is great to have on a weekly menu.

This is an Indian style soup, hence the soup is prepared using whole garam masala ingredients, onions and ginger garlic paste. Lime juice, tomato or tamarind is used for some tanginess.

We prefer light soups over creamy ones and this soup is often on our menu in Fall & Winter. With some grilled cheese sandwich on the side, it is a wholesome meal. Chicken clear soup or charu also goes will with rice, dal and some vegetable stir fry on the side.

You can pair chicken charu and rice with some pappu (plain dal), methi dal or even kale dal. As for a vegetable stir fry; we usually prefer chikkudu kaya kura, potato or aloo fry, bendi fry or green vankaya (Thai eggplant) masala.

Ingredients

• Chicken Thighs - use skinless chicken thighs with bone. Chicken wings are a good substitute.
• Spices - whole garam masala, pepper powder, chili powder, coriander and salt.
• Other Ingredients - curry leaves, onions, ginger garlic, oil and lime juice.

Equipment

I prefer pressure cooker to prepare this Indian style chicken soup. Instant Pot and Indian pressure cookers work well for this recipe. Instructions are for cooking in Instant Pot but you can follow same instructions even for stovetop Indian pressure cooker.

Instructions

Chicken - cut the meat around the thigh bones into bite size pieces (1 & 2 in above collage) and then cut each bone into two or three pieces (#3-4).

Instant Pot Instructions - Heat oil in inner pot of Instant Pot on 'Sauté' mode. Once the pot and oil are hot, roast cardamoms, cloves, cinnamon, bay leaves, caraway seeds and curry leaves (#5 in above collage). Then add onions and saute until soft (#6).

Then sauté ginger garlic paste for a minute, until raw ginger smell dissipates. Add all the powders, salt and mix well. Then add chicken and fry until spices coat chicken pieces and, are lightly roasted and brown (#7-8).

Add water until chicken pieces and are immersed in it. Select 'Cancel' on Instant Pot touch pad and select 'pressure cook' or 'manual' and cook for 3 minutes. Let pressure release naturally. In Indian pressure cooker, cook for 3 whistles.

Open the lid, adjust reasoning and garnish with fresh coriander leaves. Check the consistency of the soup. If it is too thick, add some water, select 'sauté' setting and bring soup to a boil and cook for few minutes.

Serve as soup or with rice as a side dish. If serving as a soup, squeeze some lime juice just before serving.

Tip: when serving as soup, remove bones from the soup, pull off any meat on the bone and add the meat back to soup. Sometimes I do not trim the thigh before cooking. I cut the thigh into 2 pieces and after the soup is done, I pull off the cooked meat from the bone.

Substitutions

• Chicken- Wings are good substitute for thighs. Discard the tip, trim as much skin as you can. Use both the wingette and the drumette.
• Tomatoes- when serving with rice, you can add some tomatoes and skip lime juice. Add tomatoes along with spices, cook until soft and mushy. Then follow rest of the recipe. You can also add tamarind instead of tomato and lime juice.

Variation

• Black Pepper- replace chili powder with black pepper. You can add 6 - 8 pepper corns in tempering and use extra ½ teaspoon (total 1 tsp) of pepper powder or to taste.
• Bottle Gourd or Melon Cucumber - this won't be chicken clear soup but addition of either of these is a good variation to charu, specially when serving with rice. Since these cook really quick, once the soup is done, open the lid, add the veggies, pressure cook for 0-1 minute.

Soup Recipes

Signup to the newsletter to receive latest updates from MySpicyKitchen.

📖 Recipe

More Soups