Minnesota Wild Rice Soup: A Creamy Home Recipe, and How to Cook Wild Rice

Recipes · Published 2026-10-25

A white bowl of creamy grain and vegetable soup on a wooden table — A creamy grain-and-vegetable soup; wild rice soup has a similar thick texture. Photo: rawpixel, CC0, via Openverse.

Creamy wild rice soup is one of Minnesota's best-known comfort dishes, served at church suppers, in diners and in home kitchens through the long winter. This version is built on well-cooked wild rice, a simple roux and good stock, with cooked chicken or mushrooms. It takes about an hour and a half, most of it while the rice simmers.

Serves6
Active timeabout 30 minutes
Total timeabout 1½ hours
Keeps3–4 days in the fridge

First, the wild rice

Wild rice is not rice. It is the grain of an aquatic grass (Zizania) that grows in shallow lakes and rivers, and it is Minnesota's official state grain. Our guide to wild rice, or manoomin, covers its history and harvest. For cooking, what matters is that there are two broad kinds on sale:

Hand-harvested (natural, lake) wild rice, gathered by canoe from natural stands and usually parched over a fire. The grains are often lighter brown and varied in colour, and they cook in roughly 20–30 minutes.
Cultivated (paddy-grown) wild rice, grown in managed paddies and harvested by machine. The grains are usually uniformly dark and glossy and take longer, often 45–60 minutes, to split open and become tender.

Minnesota law (section 30.49 of the Minnesota Statutes) requires wild rice sold in the state that contains cultivated rice to be labelled "paddy" or "cultivated", while packages of 100% natural rice may carry the label "100 percent naturally grown, lake and river wild rice". Check the package and follow its cooking time; it is the best guide to the rice you have.

To cook the rice

Rinse 1 cup (about 160 g) of wild rice in a sieve. Put it in a saucepan with 4 cups (about 1 litre) of water and ½ teaspoon salt, bring to the boil, then cover and simmer until most grains have split and are tender but still chewy. Drain any excess liquid. You will have 3 to 4 cups of cooked rice. Cooked wild rice keeps for several days in the fridge and freezes well, so it is worth cooking extra.

Ingredients for the soup

3 cups (about 500 g) cooked wild rice, from 1 cup uncooked
4 tablespoons (55 g) butter
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 carrots, diced
2 celery stalks, diced
225 g (8 oz) mushrooms, sliced
2 garlic cloves, chopped
⅓ cup (45 g) all-purpose flour
6 cups (1.5 litres) chicken or vegetable stock, warm
1 teaspoon dried thyme, or a few sprigs of fresh thyme, and 1 bay leaf
2 cups (about 300 g) cooked chicken, shredded (optional)
1 cup (250 ml) heavy cream or half-and-half
Salt and black pepper; chopped parsley to serve

Method

Soften the vegetables. Melt the butter in a large heavy pot over medium heat. Add the onion, carrot and celery with a pinch of salt and cook, stirring now and then, for 8–10 minutes until soft but not browned.
Add the mushrooms. Add the mushrooms and garlic and cook for another 5–7 minutes, until the mushrooms have released their liquid and it has mostly evaporated.
Make the roux. Sprinkle the flour over the vegetables and stir constantly for 2 minutes, so the raw flour taste cooks out.
Add the stock. Pour in the warm stock a ladleful at a time, stirring well after each addition so no lumps form. Add the thyme and bay leaf. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook for 15 minutes, until slightly thickened.
Add rice and chicken. Stir in the cooked wild rice and the chicken, if using. Simmer for 10 minutes so the rice absorbs some of the flavour. If you are using raw chicken instead, simmer bite-size pieces in the soup until they reach 74°C (165°F) inside, as the USDA recommends for poultry.
Finish. Lower the heat, remove the bay leaf and stir in the cream. Heat through without boiling hard. Taste and season with salt and pepper. If the soup is too thick, add a little more stock; it will thicken further as it stands.
Serve with parsley and a slice of good bread, such as our rye levain loaf or country levain loaf.

Variations

Vegetarian. Use vegetable stock, leave out the chicken and double the mushrooms, ideally with some wild or chestnut mushrooms.
Lighter. Replace the cream with whole milk and stir in a spoonful of sour cream off the heat.
Turkey. After a holiday roast, use the turkey and a stock made from the carcass.
Smoky. Fry a few rashers of chopped bacon before the vegetables and soften them in the bacon fat.

Storing and reheating safely

Thick soups hold heat for a long time, which gives bacteria a chance to grow if they cool slowly. The USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service advises refrigerating leftovers within two hours of cooking, dividing large amounts into shallow containers so they cool quickly, and eating refrigerated leftovers within three to four days. Reheat soup until it boils (USDA FSIS on leftovers). Cream-based soups can separate when frozen; for freezing, make the soup up to step 5 and add the cream when you reheat it.

Buying wild rice

Read the label for "paddy" or "cultivated", or for "100 percent naturally grown, lake and river wild rice", and for where it was grown.
Hand-harvested rice from Minnesota tribal nations and local harvesters is sold at farmers markets, co-ops and directly online.
Store uncooked wild rice in an airtight container in a cool, dry place.

Sources

USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service: Leftovers and food safety; Safe minimum internal temperatures.
Minnesota Department of Natural Resources: Wild rice.
Minnesota Statutes, section 30.49: wild rice labeling.