Pennsylvania Dutch Amish Chicken Corn Soup with Rivels recipe
I grew up in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country, commonly known as Amish country, and this authentic Pennsylvania Dutch chicken corn soup with rivels recipe is one I grew up eating often. I still make this soup on a regular basis for my family even though we now live thousands of miles away from Pennsylvania in Montana.
The Origins of our family’s Pennsylvania Dutch chicken corn soup recipe with rivels
This authentic Pennsylvania Dutch Chicken Corn Soup Recipe with rivels has been passed down in my family for a couple generations. The recipe I follow is a handwritten recipe from my mom on a recipe card that folks really don’t use much anymore.
She copied it down on the recipe card for me years ago from her own personal collection of hand written recipes she’s been collecting for many years.
We’re not sure exactly where this recipe originated from. Likely it came from my grandmother and was shared at one of the local farm women’s gatherings or maybe one of the regular church potlucks or community meals that were so common in our farm community.
While I personally am not Pennsylvania Dutch (Amish), I grew up in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country. This area was in Lancaster county and well known for the popular Amish town of Bird-in-Hand. We had Amish neighbors over the hill from us and it wasn’t uncommon for us to hear the clip clop of horse hooves pulling their buggy down the road.
A lot of the foods I grew up with were Pennsylvania Dutch influenced because both of my parents also grew up in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch Amish farm country and my paternal family lived in that area for several generations.
Interestingly where we now live in Western Montana there are several Amish communities. There are two Amish owned general stores that my mom and I love to shop at where we can find traditional Pennsylvania Dutch foods like Pennsylvania Dutch Birch Beer, a rare treat!
What are rivels made of?
Rivels are one of the ingredients in this authentic Pennsylvania Dutch chicken corn soup recipe that sets it apart from other basic chicken soup recipes. It’s common for chicken soup recipes to call for noodles but most folks outside of Pennsylvania Dutch country haven’t heard of rivels.
I grew up eating chicken corn soup with rivels and didn’t realize it was so unusual until I left home as a young adult and moved to Texas and then Montana. When I would make chicken corn soup with rivels for friends, I was often met with curious questions about what are rivels.
Rivels can be compared to a dumpling and are basically a simple doughy mixture of flour, egg and milk mixed up and dropped by hand or spoon into a hot soup broth to cook.
The first time I made my recipe for Pennsylvania Dutch chicken corn soup with rivels for my German husband, he said it reminded him of his Oma’s chicken corn soup with dumplings or spätzle.
That would make sense since the Pennsylvania Dutch have German origins so there are some similarities in foods and language that we’ve noticed.
German Spätzle is a type of German egg noodle made of flour, egg and milk or water with a chewy texture like a dumpling. So basically the ingredients are the same as a rivel, but the way they are formed is slightly different.
Pennsylvania Dutch Chicken Corn Soup Recipe
I love that this easy chicken corn soup with rivels can be made in about half an hour. That’s especially helpful when I need a quick, healthy lunch or last minute healthy dinner idea.
Pennsylvania Dutch Chicken Corn Soup ingredients:
-2 cups shredded chicken (leftover Thanksgiving turkey also works quite well in this recipe!)
-8 cups chicken broth (here’s how to easily make your own nourishing chicken bone broth)
-1 TBS butter or olive oil
-1 large onion chopped small
-1 cup chopped celery (may include chopped celery leaves too)
-1 cup sliced carrots (I try to slice them no wider than 1/4″ thick so they cook faster)
-2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
-2 1/2 cups sweet corn
-salt and pepper to taste
Pennsylvania Dutch Rivel ingredients:
-1 cup flour
-1/4 cup milk
-1 egg beaten
Pennsylvania Dutch Chicken Corn Soup Directions:
- In a large soup pot, heat the butter or olive oil. Add the onion, celery, carrots, and garlic and sauté for a few minutes or until the onions turn translucent.
- Add the chicken broth, chicken and corn. Bring to a boil then reduce the heat to medium/low.
- Cook for about 10-15 minutes or until the carrots are soft. Salt and pepper to taste.
How to Cook Rivels:
- While the soup is cooking, mix together the flour, milk and egg with a fork. It will be a sticky dough.
- About five minutes before the soup is done cooking, drop the rivel dough by teaspoon size blobs into the hot broth. Cook for five minutes. The rivels will cook and float on the surface of the soup.
- Once the soup is done, ladle into soup bowls, serve and enjoy!
Optional Hard Boiled Egg Variation for Chicken Corn Soup with Rivels
Growing up, my mom always served chopped hard boiled eggs in our Pennsylvania Dutch Chicken Corn Soup with rivels. It was tasty but I always thought it was unusual to have hard boiled eggs in soup since we didn’t eat any other soups with hard boiled eggs in them.
Then I learned that adding chopped hard boiled eggs (or in our case easy peel steamed farm fresh eggs!) to chicken corn soup with rivels is an authentic Pennsylvania Dutch touch to the soup.
I currently don’t make this soup with hard boiled eggs in it because my kids prefer to eat their hard boiled eggs on the side and not in their soup.
If you would like to add hard boiled eggs for an even more authentic Pennsylvania Dutch touch to your chicken corn soup with rivels, simply sprinkle chopped hard boiled eggs over the soup right before serving.
Tips for Making Pennsylvania Dutch Chicken Corn Soup with Rivels
This chicken corn soup can be made completely gluten free by using a gluten free flour for those who need to follow a gluten free diet.
If you want to make a large batch of soup to serve a larger group or have extra leftovers, you can easily double the recipe.
What makes our chicken corn soup even more nourishing is when we use chicken we raised on our homestead, homemade chicken bone broth, and homegrown veggies like onions, carrots, corn and garlic.
We like to roast a chicken about once a month (here’s our favorite recipe to roast a chicken). We have one meal with roasted chicken. Then I remove as much of the meat from the bones as I can and use the bones to make a batch of nourishing homemade chicken bone broth so I can make this soup.
Once the bone broth is finished cooking, we’re able to glean even more meat from the bones. I shred all the chicken I remove from the bones, use some for this soup and freeze the rest in 2 cup quantities using our vacuum sealer.
Freezing Extra Chicken Corn Soup with Rivels
I like to freeze extra chicken corn soup for future meals and the rivels freeze well in the soup too. Hard boiled eggs do not freeze well so if you choose to add them to your soup, always add them right before serving.
We reuse plastic yogurt tubs to freeze the soup and fill them to about 1″ from the top to allow for expansion once the soup freezes. Once the soup has cooled off, I ladle soup into the yogurt tubs, put a lid on, label them and put them in the freezer.
To thaw the chicken corn soup with rivels, remove it from the freezer the day before you want to use it and let it thaw in the refrigerator. If you pull the soup from the freezer for a last minute meal, it can be thawed and reheated in a pot on the stove but this takes a little while when it’s frozen solid.
Pennsylvania Dutch Amish chicken corn soup with riviels is another one of those leftovers I love to reheat and cook on the top of our wood stove so we don’t have to use our kitchen stove. It’s especially delicious on a cold Montana winter day!
updated March 2023
Rivels reminds me of the chicken corn soup my mother makes back in Pennsylvania. It is similar to yours except she adds pieces of hard boiled eggs. Great soup that I don’t see much in Montana.
Pennsylvania is actually where my mom learned this recipe! My mom’s original recipe also includes the chopped pieces of hard boiled eggs. My family never liked this addition to the soup so over the years I stopped adding it the recipe we make
Not adding the hard boiled eggs is a good idea if you want to freeze some of the soup. The egg whites get a little like rubber after freezing.
Question, when I make sweet corn chicken soup I beat the egg whites and stir it into the soup and let it cook so it’s like the Chinese sweet corn chicken soup and the egg is wispy. I am going to use a mix of your recipe(as I like the sound of it) and my own. Do you think I could still freeze the soup if I added the egg whites in there?
Thank you
I haven’t made soup with eggs the way you described but I do know that my mom told me she doesn’t freeze eggs in the soup because they get rubbery. My guess is that it might happen to the egg in your soup even if it’s cooked differently. I guess the only way to really know is give it a try 🙂
Hello there: I’ve just been kicking about the worldweirdweb looking for various receipts for rivvel soup, and this is the closest to what my grandma made for us 65 years ago and more. The biggest difference was that she always made more of a pasta dough and then cut it to pieces that were about the size of orzo/rice or whatever. She always acted as if it were a kid’s soup, and my brother, sister and I all loved it! The adults all liked the egg, but we kids were not so fond of hard boiled eggs at that age. Thanks for this post.