High Protein White Chicken Chili
White chicken chili is one of my favorite things to make for a cozy dinner in, or even having company over. It’s always a crowd pleaser! This recipe is a new favorite of mine because it has all of the warmth and delicious texture that typical white chicken chili has, but packs in hidden protein through cottage cheese. Between the chicken, beans, and cottage cheese, this is a dinner that will keep you full and warm the soul.
High Protein White Chicken Chili Ingredients
Onion & Garlic: The building blocks of pretty much any soup recipe is onion and garlic. They add a base of beautiful flavor to soup and perfectly caramelize in the pot to prepare it for the other ingredients. A sweet yellow onion is best but feel free to substitute for a red onion for a bit of a different flavor.
Peppers & Chiles: Adding in chopped jalapeno peppers and a can of green chiles adds a bit of spice to the dish. Depending on how spicy you’d like your soup to be, you can choose to leave out the jalapeno or you can choose to keep the seeds to make it extra spicy.
Corn: Adding a can of sweet corn to the chili is one of the most important additions to the recipe in my opinion. It not only adds that sweetness to contrast the spiciness of the peppers and saltiness of the other ingredients, it also adds another texture that thickens the bite. Fresh, frozen, or canned will work.
Cottage Cheese: Cottage cheese is the secret to packing in the protein. Even if you don’t like cottage cheese on its own I highly recommend trying it since it’s not an obvious component of the chili. If you’d like to sub it, feel free to use 3/4 cup of light cream, full-fat coconut milk, or even whole milk as a replacement.
Cilantro: Fresh cilantro is the finishing touch that is mixed into the soup. I love pairing cilantro with spicy recipes because the contrast is so tasty. Be sure to save some extra cilantro to top off each soup both with, alongside any other topping you prefer such as extra jalapeno slices or shredded cheese.
high protein white chicken chili
4
servings20
minutes30
minutesWhite chicken chili is one of my favorite things to make for a cozy dinner in, or even having company over. It’s always a crowd pleaser! This recipe is a new favorite of mine because it has all of the warmth and delicious texture that typical white chicken chili has, but packs in hidden protein through cottage cheese. Between the chicken, beans, and cottage cheese, this is a dinner that will keep you full and warm the soul.
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Ingredients
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, additional to taste
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)
16 ounces 4% milkfat cottage cheese
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, diced
1 jalapeño pepper, seeds removed and diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
15 ounce can cannellini beans (or navy or great northern beans), drained and rinsed
15 ounce can corn kernels
4 ounce can green chiles
32 ounces reduced-sodium chicken broth (4 cups)
3 cups shredded rotisserie chicken (or one pound boneless chicken breast, cooked and shredded)
1/2 cup fresh cilantro, roughly chopped, additional for garnish
juice and zest of 1 lime
Directions
- In a small bowl, combine the oregano, salt, ground black pepper, cumin, paprika, and red pepper flakes. Set aside.
- Blend the cottage cheese in a blender or food processor, or use an immersion blender. Set aside.
- Heat the oil in a large pot or dutch oven over medium heat. Once the oil is shimmering, add the onion and jalapeño. Cook, stirring often, until the onion is translucent and beginning to brown, 5 to 7 minutes.
- Add the garlic and spice mix, and cook, stirring often, until fragrant, 1 to 2 minutes.
- Mix in the cannellini beans, corn, and green chilis. Add the broth, turn the heat to high, and bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce the heat to low and simmer to heat the beans, corn, chilis, and broth, 10 to 15 minutes.
- Remove the pot from the heat and stir in the blended cottage cheese, rotisserie chicken, cilantro, lime juice, and lime zest. Salt to taste and serve immediately. Top each bowl with a sprinkle of chopped cilantro.
Notes
- Store it: Refrigerate in a sealed container for up to 4 days. Freeze for up to 3 months.
- Reheat it: From refrigerated, microwave until warm, about 2 minutes or heat in a saucepan over medium heat until warm, about 10 minutes. From frozen, thaw in the fridge for at least 8 hours or overnight, then heat as instructed.
- Cottage Cheese: Add the cottage cheese while the pot is off heat and cooling down slightly, this will help achieve a smooth addition of the cottage cheese, avoiding any potential curdling. If minor curdling does occur, make sure the pot it completely off heat.
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Delicious and so easy! My toddlers loved it too 🥰
I’m really getting the hang of making your recipes. This one is so good. I subscribed to the newsletter so hopefully I can figure out how that works. I’m not the most textie person.😄
This recipe looks amazing and I would like to try it but it works so much better for me if I can print the recipe but I can’t find that option. Can you help me with that?
Holy flavor, yum! Was a quick and easy recipe with great taste…really hit the spot for dinner on this rainy spring day. Love the addition of blended cottage cheese for creaminess and added protein. Will definitely make this again.
Wonderful soup! Easy to put together and much more flavor than other white bean chili recipes I have tried. Could leftovers be put in the freezer?
Have you tried a dairy free version? I thought about coconut milk like your other recipes but would that not work?
Absolutely love this recipe! A couple tweaks for the double-plus batch I made that worked great:
1. I cooked a pot of Gigante beans from a 1lb RG bag. I used the cooking liquid along with stock for the liquid needed.
2. Since I was doing a x2 size batch and wanted to use all the beans I cooked, definitely more than doubled the amount of beans. But, even better, I blended up about 1.5 cups of the beans to sub for half of the total blended cottage cheese (just used 16oz for a x2 batch).
3. Love the combo of the blended beans and blended cottage cheese – richness from the cottage and an easy way to incorporate a bean surplus!
4. Freezes great! 6 portions ready for office lunches 😀
Any suggestions for making this a crockpot recipe? How would I navigate the cottage cheese?
This is sooo delicious! I love the bright acid of the lime with all the Mexi flavours. This tastes like if nachos were soup. I’m testing how well it freezes with the dairy, hopefully all goes well. This made too many portions for just me to eat, although it did almost inspire me to dive into my Dutch oven and drink. Again, so delicious!
I just took my first bite of this and OMG. I went to the store just to get a lime and it was WORTH it!! So easy and so yummy. Will make again.
Would you be willing to share the macros for protein, carbohydrates, fats, and fiber; if you have them handy? If not, I’ll calculate it
This was the best white chicken chili I have ever made. The flavors were so good, and I felt great about the amount of protein it contains. Thank you!
So much flavour and protein!
Another quick, easy and delicious meal. March round up is a winner!!
Do you have macros listed somewhere?
Turned out great! Family loved it and will probably be a new go to!
This soup is perfect and it’s so quick too.
Is it possible to make this recipe in a crockpot?
After the “reduce heat to low” is there meant to be an amount of minutes to simmer there? otherwise next instruction is remove from heat?
Seconding this question!
Great recipe with so much flavor! I’ve made this recipe four times now and freeze it for my lunches. I always look forward to lunch with this on the menu and it’s perfect for colder months. I will say that I’ve had the cottage cheese curdle when I’ve made it so next time I would let the soup cool down and add all the ingredients except the cottage cheese and stir it in at the very end.
Very delicious. I would love to know the calories and protein per seving
Is this spicy? Lots of green chili.
I haven’t frozen and reheated it yet, but I made this for the first time last night and my husband was going for seconds! We often tweak recipes and do our own thing, but we had nothing to add or adjust for this one, minus maybe some extra beans. It was flavorful, easy, and we love the extra protein for our growing boys!
So the flavor is amazing but the cottage cheese kind of curdles when you add it and it was a bit off putting. Didn’t really make it creamy, just kind of chunky. I think I prefer your other recipe where you use coconut milk instead.
This happened to me and realized soup was too hot. You have to cool it slightly then stir in the cottage cheese and then it will be silky smooth.
This is so good and so easy. LOVE
I made this recipe over the weekend. It was my first recipe from Jenn. It was delicious. So easy to make and I had all the ingredients at my house with the exception of the cilantro which I despise:). I will definitely be back to try others.
This was so good, even my toddler loved it! I omitted the jalapeño and crushed red peppers to keep it kid friendly. The green chilis added so much flavor without the spice.
This was a huge hit–super flavorful. I used peas instead of corn and added cubes of roasted butternut squash. Will be saving to use again