Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

I love chicken soup, and I have a tried-and-true chicken noodle recipe that my family does not want me to mess with. But chicken soup doesn’t always mean chicken noodle soup, so I can serve other varieties without a family mutiny. And, since the thermometer says it is now officially soup season, here are 11 delicious chicken soups for me—or you—to choose from. One thing to note: Most of these recipes call for homemade chicken stock because you can’t beat its flavor, but you can use store-bought broth if you’d like.

Serious Eats / Morgan Hunt Glaze

Homemade chicken stock—made with bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs—builds a flavorful base for this soup. After a long simmer, the soup is finished with cream and brightened with lemon.

Jenny Dorsey

Considered a medicinal soup in traditional Chinese medicine, the broth of this soup is made from a silkie chicken with its head and feet. Dried shitake mushrooms, goji berries, angelica root, and lily bulb are joined by scallions, fresh ginger, and small dried scallops in the soup.

Serious Eats / Lorena Masso

Start with homemade broth made with whole chicken parts for the best flavor, then build a soup with some of the usual suspects—carrots, onion, celery, garlic, and thyme—plus a couple of unusual suspects, including evaporated milk and Worcestershire sauce. Add homemade dumpling dough on top toward the end, and you’ll have comfort food at its finest.

Serious Eats /Morgan Hunt Glaze. Food Stylist: Margaret Monroe Dickey, Prop Stylist: Claire Spollen

A good deal of testing went into the creation of this soup, and the result is perfectly tender matzo balls simmered in a pot of chicken broth with carrots and celery until the matzo balls have expanded and cooked through, creating one of the most comforting soups of all time.

Continue to 5 of 11 below

Tim Chin

Inspired by a well-known canned soup, this recipe takes everything up several flavor notches. First, roast chicken wings before using them to create a robust and intensely savory broth. Then, cook rice in chicken fat and oil (set it aside when it’s done). Build the soup with charred onion, carrots, celery, frozen peas in the stock, and cooked chicken. Ladle the soup over rice in a bowl and wonder if you can ever go back to canned again.

Daniel Gritzer

Substitute masa harina for matzo meal (plus some other tweaks) to create this masa ball soup that’s similar to matzo ball soup. Switch up the veggies to include butternut squash and serrano pepper, use a good chicken broth, and this Mexican-inspired soup will warm you on a cold day.

Photographs and video: J. Kenji López-Alt

You’ll dirty just one pot in this streamlined version of this classic Mexican soup. First, toast pumpkin seeds in the pot and set them aside. Then, make a chicken stock with whole legs, tomatillos, chilies, and onion. When that’s done, remove the chicken and blend what remains. Return it to the pot, add the chicken removed from the bone, heat it through, and serve with a variety of garnishes.

Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

Galangal, a spice related to ginger, is non-negotiable in this soup. It’s the star of the chicken stock for the soup, and the soup includes more galangal, plus lemongrass, shallots, fish sauce, and chicken. Makrut lime leaves, fresh chiles, and coconut cream finish off the super flavorful, light, and creamy soup.

Continue to 9 of 11 below

Serious Eats / Mariel De La Cruz

This classic chicken and potato soup from the mountains around Bogotá uses three varieties of potatoes, plus corn, and a variety of seasonings. At the table, each person adds chicken, aji (made of onion, cilantro, and chile pepper, capers, and sour cream) to their liking.

J. Kenji López-Alt

This Yucatán-style lime soup gets tons of flavor from garlic cloves, bay leaves, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, peppercorns, and oregano, sofrito, lime, and grapefruit.

Serious Eats / Morgan Hunt Glaze, Food Stylist: Margaret Monroe Dickey, Prop Stylist: Claire Spollen

In Greece, "avgolemono" describes the mixture of lemon and egg alone, but the term has become synonymous with this delicious soup thickened with lemon and egg.