This creamy chicken & corn soup is lightened up, but still has a wonderfully rich and hearty texture with its thyme-infused base. You prepare some ingredients on the stove before transferring it, plus others, to the slow cooker. You’ll love the comforting and satisfying blend of hearty chicken, root vegetables, creamy-style corn, and savory bacon.
Creamy Chicken & Corn Soup Details
- Texture: This creamy chicken soup has plenty of hearty, satisfying texture from chicken and sweet potatoes. You’ll also enjoy plenty of corn in each spoonful. All of these wonderful chunks of vegetables and chicken sit in a light creamy broth made from chicken broth, whole milk, and cornstarch.
- Flavor: We love a flavor-packed dish and this creamy chicken & corn soup recipe delivers big. You’ll enjoy smoky bacon, cream-style corn, sweet potatoes, savory thyme, plus plenty of black pepper all stewed together in the slow cooker. The soup is a celebration of sweet, savory, and creamy flavors and finished with a lift of fresh parsley.
- Ease: The soup begins with browning bacon and then moves on to soup-starter basics like onions, garlic, carrots, and celery. These are cooked on the stove, but that’s the only “work” you’ll have to do. You then throw everything else right into the slow cooker except for the milk and cornstarch (see recipe directions below). Are you cooking this during the day while you’re at work? You can prep the veggies on the stove the night before.
- Time: This is a slow-cooked soup that takes about 8 hours.
This is a soup recipe that requires little effort, yet delivers so much flavor. If this appeals to you (little prep, big results!), you’ll also appreciate our minestrone soup, slow cooker chicken chili, and sweet potato turkey chili recipes.
Choosing the Right Ingredients
- Bacon: While you certainly could skip the bacon if needed, you’d miss out on a lot of the soup’s outstanding flavor.
- Celery, carrots, onion, and sweet potatoes: These vegetables add flavor, bulk, and texture.
- Thyme: With its subtle hints of earthy floral notes, thyme is an essential flavor enhancer in this soup.
- Whole milk: To keep things on the lighter side, we use and recommend 1 and 1/2 cups of whole milk, but you could easily replace it with half-and-half for a thicker soup. You could also combine 1 cup whole milk with 1/2 cup heavy cream.
- Cornstarch: It’s used as a thickener here, so do not skip this ingredient.
Overview: How to Make Creamy Chicken & Corn Soup in the Slow Cooker
The full printable recipe is below, but let’s walk through it so you understand each step before you get started.
- Cook the bacon. Let it cool, then crumble or chop into pieces.
- Cook garlic and vegetables. In the same large skillet used to cook the bacon, fry the garlic and vegetables in the bacon grease for 5 minutes until tender.
- Combine ingredients in the slow cooker. Place bacon, vegetables, and the remaining ingredients (except for the cornstarch and milk) in the slow cooker, then stir and cover. Set it on low heat for 6-7 hours.
- Whisk in cornstarch and milk. Cook for another 1 hour.
- Add garnish. Sprinkle with parsley and any leftover crumbled bacon before serving.
Serve in bread bowls or with artisan bread, biscuits, dinner rolls, breadsticks, or asiago-crusted skillet bread.
More Slow Cooker Recipes
- Honey Teriyaki Chicken
- Slow Cooker Chicken Chili Recipe
- Turkey Meatballs
- Slow Cooker Hot Chocolate
- Taco Spice Chili
For more dinner inspiration, see my list of 30 delicious fall dinner recipe ideas.
Print
Slow Cooker Creamy Chicken & Corn Soup
- Prep Time: 25 minutes
- Cook Time: 7 hours, 30 minutes
- Total Time: 8 hours
- Yield: 12 cups
- Category: Dinner
- Method: Slow Cooker
- Cuisine: American
Description
Slow cooker chicken corn chowder is a satisfying and easy crockpot dinner the whole family will love. Quick to prep and full of flavor!
Ingredients
- 4 strips bacon
- 2 large carrots, peeled and thinly sliced (a little over 1 cup)
- 2–3 celery stalks, thinly sliced (about 1 cup)
- 1/2 medium yellow onion, diced (about 3/4 cup)
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 (14 ounce) can cream-style corn
- 2 (14 ounce) cans corn, drained (or use about 3 cups frozen)
- 2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed (or regular potatoes)
- 3 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cubed
- 5 cups (1200ml) chicken broth (I use reduced sodium)
- 1 Tablespoon fresh thyme
- 2 teaspoons dried parsley flakes
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1 and 1/2 cups (360ml) whole milk
- 2 Tablespoons cornstarch
- optional: fresh (or dried) parsley for garnish
Instructions
- Cook bacon in a large skillet over medium heat until browned on both sides. (Keep grease in skillet.) Place strips on a paper-towel lined plate and allow to cool. Once cool enough to handle, crumble or chop into tiny bits and pieces.
- Add the carrots, celery, onions, and garlic to the skillet. Stir and cook the vegetables in the bacon grease over medium heat until soft, about 5 minutes. Set aside.
- Place the creamed corn, corn, sweet potatoes, chicken, chicken broth, thyme, parsley, salt, and pepper into a 5 quart or larger slow cooker. Add the celery/carrot/onions and the crumbled bacon (save some for garnish if desired). Stir together, cover with the lid, and cook on low heat for about 6-7 hours.
- At the 6-7 hour mark, whisk the cornstarch and milk together. Pour in the soup. Stir together, then cover. Cook 1 more hour. Serve warm with a sprinkle of parsley and/or any leftover bacon crumbles.
- Leftovers keep well in the refrigerator for 1 week. To reheat, simply pour into a pot over medium heat and cook until warm. Soup freezes well up to 3 months.
Notes
- Special Tools (affiliate links): Slow Cooker (5-quarts or larger)
- No Slow Cooker? No Problem. Prepare recipe through step 2. Instead of placing ingredients into a slow cooker in step 3, place into a large pot or dutch oven over medium heat. Stir together, then allow to boil and cook until chicken is no longer pink, about 30 minutes. Turn the heat down to low, stir in the whole milk and cornstarch, then simmer for 10 minutes. Serve.
I made this the other night for supper.
However I didn’t include the bacon although I’m sure that would have made it different in taste.
I’m very satisfied as to how it came out.
A wonderful treat for the fall.
Thanks again for your great recipes.
They inspire me to keep on cooking!
This was so good!
I made it in the instant pot and just put some freezer burnt frozen chicken breasts in and set for 40 minutes. Fished the chicken out, cut it up and put it back in.
My instant pot was getting quite full so I left out one can of corn. I added some more spices. It was great!
What spices did you add? My family doesn’t like thyme.
I made this recipe & your strawberry salad for our post lent service snack Also made your double chocolate cookies, brought pretzels, & a punch, coffee, & tea. Everyone loved it !!
Thank you for the advice. Probably the bacon as you said. I’ll try again. Thank you.
My soup had a slight curdled appearance even before I added the milk, which didn’t improve matters. Advice?
Hi Heather! We’re unsure how the soup could be curdled with just veggies, chicken, chicken broth and seasonings… perhaps it was the slight separation of fat from the bacon grease? This is normal. Did the soup thicken at all with the addition of milk and cornstarch? Make sure to whisk those together until no lumps remain before adding to the soup.
Really enjoyed this recipe. I made it on the stove top as we were staying in after receiving 8″ of snow. Nothing feels better and more comforting than soup on a wintery day!
We have made this recipe 5 times since August. It is phenomenal. Would love to have the nutritional information.
Hi Becki, so glad you love this one! We don’t usually include nutrition information as it can vary between different brands of the same ingredients. Plus, many recipes have ingredient substitutions or optional ingredients listed. However, there are many handy online calculators where you can plug in and customize your exact ingredients/brands. Readers have found this one especially helpful: https://www.verywellfit.com/recipe-nutrition-analyzer-4157076
Dumb question but does the chicken get put in the crock pot raw?
It does!
Would this recipe lend itself to shrimp instead of chicken? With the shrimp added close to finish time?
Hi David, we haven’t tried it but we can’t see why that wouldn’t work! Let us know if you give it a try.