Quick & Easy Turkey & Rice Soup (Pressure Cooker or Stovetop)

This Turkey and Rice Soup is so easy to make and it's ready in under 30 minutes! While there are many ways you can cook the soup, using your pressure cooker will quickly infuse the flavors, and all the ingredients are perfectly cooked! 

Making homemade soup is the perfect way to use up leftover turkey meat and it freezes great! So, make it now with holiday leftovers and then reheat on a cold winter day! 

You can switch up the ingredients to use other Thanksgiving leftovers like corn, and/ or green beans, or even add leftover mashed potatoes to make it a creamy turkey and potato soup instead of turkey and rice soup. 

Suggested Kitchen Tools for Turkey and Rice Soup

• Electric Pressure Cooker
• Large Ladle
• Sharp Knife
• Cutting Board

Ingredients & Substitutions

The best part about making this kind of soup is to use what you have on hand and what you love and it will still turn out great!

Turkey

​This recipe is perfect for leftover Thanksgiving turkey, but you can also use raw turkey if you don't have any already cooked. No need to cook the turkey first, just cube it up and add it to the soup and it will cook at the same time as everything else. 

You can use any cut of the turkey you want, so it's perfect for using up the thighs, legs, or turkey breast. A combination of white meat and dark meat works great in this soup!

You can even switch the turkey to chicken and use leftover rotisserie chicken or uncooked chicken that is cubed and make a chicken and rice soup. 

Rice

In this recipe, I made my own wild rice mix with a combination of wild rice, brown rice, and white rice and I loved the way it turned out. The wild rice had just a bit of chew and the brown and white rice were both cooked perfectly and weren't mushy at all. You can also use a wild rice blend which usually contains wild rice, brown rice, red rice, and black rice and you don't have to change the cooking times. 

Refer to the list below for suggested cooking times based on the rice you want to use.

• ¾ cup of wild rice blend or your own blend that includes wild rice: 5 minutes of PC time with an immediate release for chewier wild rice and a 7-10 minute Natural Release followed by a manual release of pressure for slightly softer wild rice.
• ¾ cup of white rice: decrease the PC time to 3 minutes with an immediate release of pressure.
• ¾ cup of brown rice: 5 minutes PC time with an immediate release of pressure.
• Combination of brown and white rice: 5 minutes PC time with an immediate release of pressure.

You could also switch out the rice for noodles if you wanted a turkey noodle soup however, I would decrease the PC time according to the type of noodle you want to use. If you want to use broken spaghetti noodles, I would use about 4 ounces of the noodles and decrease the PC time to 1-2 minutes with an immediate release. If you wanted to use egg noodles, I would use about 2 cups (4 ounces) of medium egg noodles and PC for 1 minute with a 5-minute natural release and then release the remaining pressure. You should not have to add any additional broth when making these substitutions. 

Vegetables

I kept things really simple and used onions, fresh celery, and carrots in this recipe, but you could certainly add other vegetables that you love as long as they will cook (and not overcook) in the PC time of 5 minutes. 

Homemade turkey soup is a great way to use up leftover vegetables and here are my suggestions on when to add them to the soup.

• Cooked or raw corn: add to soup before pressure cooking.
• Cooked green beans: add to soup after pressure cooking.
• Raw or Cooked mushrooms: add to soup before pressure cooking.
• Raw or Cooked Spinach: add to soup after pressure cooking.
• Raw kale, collard greens, or Swiss chard: add to soup before pressure cooking.
• Cooked kale, collard greens, or Swiss chard: add to soup after pressure cooking.

Obviously, there are many more vegetables that you can add, but those are some that I think would be perfect in this soup.

Seasonings & Broth

I really recommend making your own turkey bone broth from a leftover turkey carcass if you have one, but if not you can substitute that with store-bought turkey broth, chicken broth, or even vegetable broth. 

I used dry herbs and spices in this recipe and kept them very simple, but you can absolutely use fresh thyme, poultry seasoning, or a little rosemary if you like. When substituting fresh herbs for dried, you usually use 3 times the amount. So, for the thyme in this recipe, I would use 3 teaspoons of fresh thyme or 3-4 sprigs. 

The amount of seasonings you use will depend on the broth or stock you use and how seasoned it is. What I recommend doing is going very light on the salt and pepper and other seasonings until after the soup has finished cooking and then taste the broth and adjust as needed. I used 2 teaspoons of salt in my turkey soup, but if you are unsure of how salty your broth is, start off with just 1 teaspoon and then taste after pressure cooking and add more if needed.

How to Make Turkey and Rice Soup in a Pressure Cooker

Mise En Place (Prep)

• Make the bone broth the day before if you are making your own.
• Cut the carrots into ½-¾" slices.
• Cut the celery into ¾" slices.
• Cut the onion into ½" dice.
• Cut the cooked turkey into 2" chunks or raw turkey into 1" chunks.
• Measure out the broth or stock and the seasonings.
• Select your rice and measure it out.

Sauté

You can skip this step and dump everything into the pot and pressure cook, but I like sautéing the veggies and toasting the rice in a little butter for added flavor.

Melt 2 Tablespoons of butter on high sear/sauté and add in the onions, carrots, celery, and seasonings. Stir and sauté on high for 3-5 minutes.

Add in the rice and stir. Sauté on high for 1-2 minutes to toast the rice.

Pressure Cooking

Deglaze the pot with the turkey broth and scrape the bottom of the pot to make sure nothing is sticking. Add in the chopped raw or cooked turkey and the bay leaf.

Close the pressure lid and make sure the valve is to the sealed position. Set the pressure cooker to high and the time to 5 minutes. Hit start. It will take 8-12 minutes for the pot to come to pressure.

If you plan on making the soup to freeze or for reheating most of it, I recommend doing an immediate release of pressure after the 5 minutes of pressure cooking is complete. This will leave the wild rice slightly chewy, but as it sits and absorbs more liquid it softens without overcooking.

If you plan on serving it immediately and not having leftovers, do a 5-10 minute Natural Release followed by manually releasing the remaining pressure.

Once the pressure has been released and it's safe to open the lid, remove the pressure cooking lid and give the soup a stir.

Get a little bit of the broth into a bowl and taste for seasonings. Add more salt and pepper to taste.

Serve the delicious soup with some crusty bread and enjoy!

Turkey & Rice Soup Stovetop Instructions

If you don't have a pressure cooker or just prefer to make the soup on the stove, here are my suggestions.

All the ingredients remain the same except increase the turkey stock or broth to 7-8 cups since there is more evaporation when cooking stovetop versus using a pressure cooker.

In a large stock pot or Dutch oven, melt the butter. Sauté the vegetables with the seasonings on high for 3-5 minutes. Add the rice and sauté for another minute.

Add the turkey stock, cubed turkey, and bay leaf. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer.

Simmer, uncovered, for 20-30 minutes or until the rice and vegetables are cooked to your liking.

Serve & Enjoy!

Storage & Reheating Instructions

How to Store Leftover Turkey Soup

Homemade turkey soup will last about 3 days in the refrigerator and up to 1 year in the freezer.

Refrigeration

Store the soup in air-tight containers in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

Freezer

Before freezing it is very important that the soup is cold, so I recommend refrigerating the leftovers overnight before freezing them.

If the food is warm when packaged for freezing, steam can be produced inside the container or freezer bag, resulting in ice crystals forming.

Air is another issue when freezing food, so make sure you choose a container that is the proper size for the amount of leftovers. You don't want a 3-cup container for 1 cup of soup or there will be too much air trapped in the container which can lead to decreased quality of the soup.

My preferred method for freezing is using a vacuum sealer which eliminates this issue, however can be challenging when freezing soups that contain a lot of liquid.

What I have been doing lately and works great is putting the leftover cold soup into a vacuum sealer bag with at least 4" of extra bag at the end you insert into the vacuum sealer. I put the bag on a tray and fold over the 4" of bag underneath the soup and freeze it on the tray overnight. The next day I vacuum seal it and then freeze for long term storage.

How to Reheat Turkey and Rice Soup

Stovetop or Sear/Sauté

If the soup is cold and not frozen, simply reheat it on medium heat on the stove or in the pressure cooker using sear/sauté until it is heated through. You may need to add a little more stock or broth to the soup and it's fine to use chicken broth if you don't have turkey broth.

Slow Cook

This is my favorite way to reheat from frozen, but it also works for soup that has been refrigerated.

Remove the soup from the freezer bag and slow cook on low from frozen. I like to add about a cup of broth to the frozen soup. It takes about 1 hour to thaw and reheat the soup if it is frozen flat in a bag. It could take longer if the soup is frozen in deeper containers.

If the soup is thawed, slow cook or low or high with 1-2 cups of extra broth (the amount depends on how much soup you have and how much liquid the rice absorbed) until heated through. This will take between 30 minutes and 1 hour depending on how much soup you have.

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