← All recipes · 🇵🇷 Puerto Rican
🇵🇷 Puerto Rican
Sopa de Pollo con Fideos
⏱ 45 min
🍞 ~22g
🍽 6 servings
⭐ 5/5
⚠️ Estimates only — not medical advice. Carb counts vary by brand and portion. Always verify with your endo or CDCES.
🌍 Cultural note
This is the "you're sick, drink this" soup. It's also the "it's raining and we need comfort" soup. Puerto Rican chicken noodle soup is louder than the American version — built on a sofrito base, golden from Sazón, packed with calabaza and yautía or potato, and finished with thin fideo noodles. One bowl can fix a bad day.
Why this recipe is T1D-friendly
- Most of the carbs are in measured fideos (about 12g per serving from a controlled handful) — much easier to track than a free-pour
- The chicken brings serious protein (~20g per serving) and the soup format means slow eating, which often translates to a gentler post-meal curve
Ingredients
- 2 lbs bone-in chicken thighs and drumsticks, skin removed (~0g carbs)
- 8 cups chicken broth (~4g carbs)
- 3 tbsp sofrito (~3g carbs)
- 1 packet Sazón con culantro y achiote (~1g carbs)
- 1 medium potato, peeled and cubed (~25g carbs / ~4g per serving)
- 1 cup calabaza (West Indian pumpkin), cubed (~12g carbs / ~2g per serving)
- 1 carrot, sliced (~6g carbs)
- 1 cup fideo noodles (thin angel hair, broken into pieces) (~60g carbs / ~10g per serving)
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 tsp adobo
- 1 tsp oregano
- Fresh cilantro for garnish
- Lime wedges for serving
Directions
- Heat olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add sofrito and cook 2 minutes until fragrant.
- Stir in Sazón, adobo, and oregano.
- Add chicken pieces and brown lightly on both sides, about 5 minutes.
- Pour in chicken broth, add bay leaf, and bring to a boil.
- Reduce heat and simmer 25 minutes, skimming any foam off the top.
- Add potato, calabaza, and carrot. Simmer 10 more minutes until vegetables are nearly tender.
- Add fideos and cook 5-6 minutes until noodles are soft and chicken pulls away from bone easily.
- Remove chicken, shred off the bone, return meat to the pot. Discard bones and bay leaf.
- Taste and adjust salt. Serve with fresh cilantro and lime wedges.
Dash's kid tips 🐆
- Dash says: this is the soup that hides veggies the best — the calabaza melts into the broth and even calabaza-skeptical kids slurp it up
- For a lower-carb version (~12g), use Banza chickpea pasta or cut the fideos in half and double up on shredded chicken
- Squeeze of lime right before eating is non-negotiable — it brightens everything and makes the soup taste like home