If you are looking for a great recipe for your leftover turkey, you found it in this Turkey Wild Rice Soup!
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your families! Today I bring you a recipe for my favorite thing to make with leftovers: soup!
This Turkey Wild Rice soup is perfect to make with your leftover turkey because it has all the things in it that you probably already have on hand from your Thanksgiving cooking extravaganza: carrots, onion, celery, garlic, and fresh herbs.
I make my Turkey Wild Rice Soup with butter and a little half and half to give it some creaminess. If you want to make this dairy-free, it’s easy to do. Just use oil in place of the butter to sauté the vegetables and either skip the half and half or use a plain non-dairy creamer.
This is an easy way to make good use of a lot of your leftovers. I just love the flavor of this Turkey and Wild Rice soup and it won’t take you nearly as long as it took to make your Thanksgiving feast.
If you use your turkey bones to make stock this soup will really sing, but it’s also great using chicken stock, so use what you have. 
Sherry wine compliments the flavor well here, but if you don’t have it that’s okay, your soup will still be delicious.
The first time I had slivered almonds in my turkey and wild rice soup I knew I’d never go back to leaving them out. Another great addition if you have them. They give the soup an unexpected, but welcome crunch.
If it happens to be any other day of the year when you’re reading this, you can certainly make this soup with leftover chicken as well.
I hope you enjoy this soup and the rest of the weekend with your family! Need more inspiration? Try this Sweet Potato Soup or this Spicy Black Bean Soup.
How to Make Turkey and Wild Rice Soup
Leftover Turkey and Wild Rice Soup
- Total Time: 1 hour 10 mins
- Yield: 6-8 1x
Description
This Turkey and Wild Rice Soup is perfect for your leftover turkey or use leftover chicken!
Ingredients
- 4 tablespoons butter
- 2 carrots, chopped
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 2 celery stalks, sliced
- 8 ounces sliced mushrooms (chopped if you prefer, but not necessary)
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 4 tablespoons flour
- 4–5 cups turkey or chicken stock
- 1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme leaves
- 1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary
- 1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
- 1 cup uncooked wild rice
- 1/2 cup sherry wine (optional)
- 3 cups shredded cooked turkey
- 1/2 cup half and half
- 1/4 cup slivered almonds (optional)
- salt and pepper
Instructions
- Melt your butter in a large Dutch oven or stock pot.
- Add the carrots, onion, and celery to the pot, season with salt and pepper, and cook until softened, about 5 minutes.
- Add the mushrooms and garlic and cook another 5 minutes.
- Add the flour and cook about 3-5 minutes.
- Add 4 cups of the turkey or chicken stock, thyme, rosemary, Worcestershire sauce, and rice.
- Bring to a simmer and then cover and simmer for 30 minutes.
- Add the sherry and turkey and simmer, uncovered, another 15-20 minutes, until the rice is cooked.
- Stir in the half and half and slivered almonds.
- Taste and add salt and pepper as needed.
- Add more stock if soup is too thick for your liking. Enjoy!
- Prep Time: 10 mins
- Cook Time: 60 mins
- Category: soups
Nutrition
- Calories: 335
- Sugar: 5.5g
- Sodium: 253.7mg
- Fat: 12.8g
- Saturated Fat: 5.9g
- Carbohydrates: 28.7g
- Fiber: 2.9g
- Protein: 24.1g
- Cholesterol: 77.5mg
If you love healthy soups, you MUST try this Easy Oven Chicken Stew!
This recipe was first published in 2016. A video was added in 2019.
Soo good and easy!
★★★★★
Delicious!!! I didn’t add the cream because I froze some of it. I’ll add the cream after thawing it just before I heat it.
★★★★★
This recipe is delicious! We used leftover smoked turkey which was amazing!
★★★★★
Oh that sounds amazing!
This soup is insanely good! The flavor is crazy delicious if you use leftover turkey carcass to make the stock…carcass, herbs (parsley, sage, thyme) and veggies (onion, garlic, carrot, celery) then strain. The sherry wine is an absolutely must! I did not use flour, mushrooms or almonds because of dietary restrictions. I cooked the wild rice separately and rinsed it a couple of times before adding it to the soup with the turkey, so the soup would keep its beautiful color. This recipe has found a permanent place in my recipe book; thank you for sharing!
★★★★★
Thanks so much for your feedback!
Rave reviews from this household, including our youngest food critic. I imagine it’s perfect as written but I doubled fresh bone broth and eyeballed it with no issues. My partner insists the mushrooms and cream were what made this soup stand out. We will be adding this to our regular rotation.
★★★★★
So happy to hear. Thank you for your feedback!
Insanely good! Made this recipe with zero substitutions; hubby and I gobbled it all up in one sitting. What I thought would serve two dinners turnout out to be one haha
★★★★★
So happy to hear this!
I had a hard time with the rice. It turned my soup pink and had a starchy consistency. It still tasted ok, but thankfully we weren’t serving it to guests. I think next time I will pre-cook the rice and add it with the turkey. I also used poultry seasoning instead of the fresh herbs because I thought it would give a little more depth of flavor. The kids loved it and I’m sure they’ll request it again.
★★★
I just finished making/eating this DELICIOUS soup. Made it exactly as written but left out the half and half and in my opinion it didn’t suffer at all. My husband kept saying… so good…. delicious!…..I know what my turkey bones will be used for over the next years. Thanks for a delicious recipe..🤤
Pretty good, but still missing a little something on the seasoning side for me. I was careful to not over-salt. My wife ended up doctoring it with a little bit of Maggi sauce.
★★★★
I made your soup tonight and it was delicious! My husband loved it. I did tweak it a bit. No mushrooms and my husband doesn’t like rosemary or thyme so I added 1/4 tsp poultry seasoning and used milk instead of half and half. I will definitely make this again soon. Thanks for the recipe.
Great recipe! I’ve made something similar for years, but decided to try your recipe today. Came out great. A tip for using up thanksgiving leftovers, you can add leftover gravy, green bean casserole, cooked veggies and even a bit of stuffing/dressing when you add the turkey.
Thanks for the recipe.
★★★★★
Any subs for dairy?
I think coconut milk would work well! Ripple also makes a great dairy-free milk that is a great substitute.
Almond milk works as a sub for the half&half and use olive or avocado oil instead of the butter.
I just made this and used broth instead of butter or oil and used canned full fat coconut milk equal sub for dairy. Spectacular recipe!
★★★★★
Followed the recipe exactly and it was fantastic! My husband said it was the best soup I’ve ever made. Thank you so much we will definitely make it again 🙂
★★★★★
This was great! I used almond milk instead of half and half, otherwise I stuck to the recipe. Even the leftovers are delicious. Thank you for the recipe.
★★★★★
This is a terrific recipe! Best way to use turkey leftovers that we’ve experienced. Thanks for sharing it!
★★★★★
I subbed avocado oil for butter and coconut milk (canned full fat) for the half and half. Super good!!! Also added a little bit of onion powder and garlic powder. I’d high recommend.
★★★★★
Can you use white rice instead of wild?
I cubed 2 large turkey tenderloins I smoked (Instead of shredding turkey) … and then made it without the wine & almonds and used a frozen mushroom blend from Whole Foods that give it a nice earthy flavor. Also added in frozen cauliflower & used a bag of left over frozen soup started vegetables & threw in as well some frozen cubed butternut squash….and it turned out delicious! Very good balanced recipe to take up an extra veggies which need to be used. Was a nice change of pace from the usual flavor of chicken & vegetable soup.
★★★★★
I am mushroom adverse. Would there be any other substitutions for mushrooms?
Oh I forgot!! Didn’t have any bread or crackers so I topped my soup with dry Mrs Cubbinsons seasoned stuffing mix. Wow, so good!!!
★★★★★