15 Soups That Make Chicago Winters Easier (And All of Them Arrive at Your Door)
Chicago winters change what dinner looks like in your house. The kitchen feels further away when you walk in cold and tired, the gray sky at 4:30pm has already drained whatever cooking energy you had left, and the family still needs to eat within the hour. Most weeknights in February, that math doesn't work in your favor.
This is where soup earns its keep on a weeknight. You can warm it up in a couple of minutes, dinner is ready, and there's almost nothing to clean up afterward.
We've been making soup at Meal Village from the early days, and after running deliveries across 120+ Chicagoland zip codes through enough Februarys to know what people order when the weather turns, I've put together this list of the soups our customers come back for the most.
Every one of them comes in a 16oz size or a 32oz size, depending on how much soup you need. We don't run subscriptions and we don't ask for a minimum order, so go ahead and place your order.
1. Chicken Noodle Soup
If you've never ordered soup from us before, you should start here. This is the soup most of our customers reach for first, and it's the one they come back to whenever somebody at home is fighting a cold, when a kid refuses everything else on the menu, or when the week has been brutal enough that food has to feel like care.
We make this one the old-fashioned way. We simmer fresh chicken with egg noodles and vegetables, and we don't add anything fancy on top. That's the whole point of it, and it's why customers keep ordering it.
2. Chicken Wild Rice Soup
You should order this one when you want chicken soup but you also want it to fill you up on its own. It's heartier than the noodle version because we make it with a creamy base and a blend of white rice and wild rice. This blend gives the bowl more texture than a simple chicken broth soup.
We add fresh herbs to it as well. If you want to stretch this one across 2 nights, the 32oz is the size to order.
3. Beef Barley Soup
You should order this on the kind of February evening where you walked through unshoveled snow to get to your front door. It eats more like a stew than a soup. We simmer bite-sized beef tips in beef broth with fresh vegetables and pearl barley, and the barley is what makes the bowl feel filling in a way pasta can't quite match.
This soup tends to feel familiar to people. If your grandparents used to make something close to it on Sunday afternoons, the first spoonful is going to land in your memory before it lands in your stomach.
4. Tomato Basil Soup
This is our grilled cheese partner. We slow-simmer Roma tomatoes with garlic, olive oil, and basil pesto, and we serve it with parmesan croutons. The slow simmering is what brings the natural sweetness out of the tomatoes themselves, and that's part of why this version tastes the way it does.
If you order the 16oz alongside something from our sides menu, you have a complete weeknight dinner without any actual cooking on your end.
5. Vegetable Minestrone Soup
When you want a real meal that also happens to count as a vegetable dinner, this is the one to order. We make this Italian vegetable soup with cannellini beans and fresh basil, and we serve it with shredded parmesan.
6. Chunky Beef Chili Soup
We call this one a winter favorite on our menu, and the way customers order it backs that up. We make it with ground beef, cumin, chiles, and tomatoes, and we serve it with crackers on the side. Calling it a "soup" is technically correct, but the bowl that lands at your door is closer to chili in spirit.
You should order this on the kind of week that's been one fight after another. It pairs well with a beer, and it pairs even better with the decision not to make any more food decisions for the rest of the night.
7. Lemon Chicken Orzo Soup
This one is lighter than every other chicken soup on the list. We make this light chicken soup with orzo pasta, chicken broth, fresh lemon, parsley, and dill. The lemon is what pulls it in a different direction from the others.
You should order this on the third day in a row that you've eaten something cream-based and you're ready for something brighter.
8. Cream of Mushroom Soup
This is the most adult-leaning soup we make. We simmer savory mushrooms with herbs in a sherried cream, and the result is the kind of bowl you'd serve as a starter at a small dinner party. It also works as a Tuesday-night dinner just as well.
If you've only ever had cream of mushroom in passing, this version is the one to actually sit down with.
9. Tomato Florentine Soup with Rice
This one is a velvety cream of tomato brimming with tender spinach and fluffy white rice. It's tomato soup that's actually filling. The rice keeps absorbing the broth as the bowl sits in front of you, and that's what turns it from a starter into something closer to a full meal.
If you already love our Tomato Basil and want a heavier version of that same flavor, this is what you should order next.
10. Spinach Tortellini Soup
If you have a kid at home who refuses to eat vegetables, this is the soup that gets the spinach in. We make it with cheese tortellini, tomatoes, fresh spinach, and a savory vegetable broth. The tortellini is the price of admission, and the spinach gets in by association.
It's the closest thing on our menu to a soup-and-pasta hybrid.
A quick note on heating before we get to the rest of the list. All our soups are ready to heat and eat just microwave for 2 to 3 minutes and enjoy.
11. Cheddar Potato Soup with Scallions
This is our sharp cheddar potato soup, and we top it with chopped green onions before we send it out. It's heavier than most things on this list. You should order it on the kind of day where the commute was bad, the meeting was worse, and the snow piled up on the driveway just to make the day feel even more pointless.
The 16oz is enough for a meal on its own. If you go with the 32oz, you also have your next-day lunch covered without having to think about it.
12. Broccoli Cheddar Soup
We simmer fresh broccoli florets in vegetable broth with sharp cheddar and cream, and the result is one of those comfort-soup classics that does what it sets out to do without trying too hard. The brightness from the broccoli keeps the cheese from feeling too heavy on the palate.
Our customers order this one heavily through the cold months, and the cold months in Chicago are long.
13. Chicken Pot Pie Soup
This one is pot pie filling in a bowl, and we top it with our all-natural pie crust crisps. If chicken pot pie sits in your top 5 comfort-food list, this version is going to land hard. We make it with creamy chicken and vegetables, and the crisps do the work the crust would normally do in a pot pie.
It's closer to a casserole than a soup in spirit. If pot pie is your move when the weather is cold, this version scratches the same itch with less work on your end.
14. Cream of Cauliflower Soup
We simmer fresh cauliflower with white wine in a silky cream, and the result is something elegant in the same way Cream of Mushroom is elegant, just lighter and more delicate.
If you pair it with bread and a glass of something white, what you have is a Tuesday-night dinner that feels nicer than a Tuesday night usually feels.
15. Chicken & Smoked Sausage Gumbo Soup
This is the one to order when you want something different from the rest of the list. We make it as a one-pot soup with smoked sausage, peppers, chicken, and okra, and we put all the flavors of New Orleans into it. It's the most distinctive of the chicken-based options on our menu, and it's the only one with that kind of flavor profile.
You should order this on the night when chicken noodle feels too quiet for what the day was.
What to do tonight
Chicago winter weeknights don't negotiate. Cold weather, a hungry family, and the meeting that ran long again will show up regardless of what you had planned. What's actually in your hands is whether dinner is something you still have to make tonight, or whether it's something already waiting in the fridge to be heated.
If you've never ordered from us before, I'd start with the chicken noodle. If you've ordered before but always reach for the same one or two soups, these soups are good enough to work through the rest of the week. There's a soup on it for almost every kind of weeknight you're likely to have between now and March.
Before you head over to order: our daily lineup rotates, so a soup or two from this list may not be on the menu the day you check. These 15 are what our regulars come back to most — the live menu is where to see what's cooking today.
We deliver to 120+ Chicagoland zip codes, with no subscription and no minimum order.
