Creamy White Chili with Cream Cheese

Looking for a white chicken chili with cream cheese that will knock your socks off? Look no further than this Creamy White Chili with Cream Cheese. This comforting soup is fiber-packed with great northern beans, and they pull double duty—as a thickener for the soup and to add texture and bulk. Protein-rich chicken swims in a deliciously creamy broth of garlic, onions, green chilis and smoky cumin. The cream cheese adds a tang and melts into the broth. We finished it with punchy cilantro. Keep reading for our expert tips, including the best time to add the cream cheese for a silky finish.

Tips from the EatingWell Test Kitchen

These are the key tips we learned while developing and testing this recipe in our Test Kitchen to make sure it works, tastes great and is good for you too!

• In this recipe, we add the cream cheese in Step 3, once the chicken is fully cooked. By removing the skillet from the heat at that point, the cream cheese can melt without getting overcooked.
• We chose great northern beans for this dish because they hold their shape well during cooking; however, cannellini beans would also be an excellent option.
• We believe 5 garlic cloves provide the perfect flavor, but feel free to adjust the quantity to suit your taste.
• The most commonly used canned green chile for chili recipes is the Anaheim, but you can also opt for poblano, Hatch, fire-roasted peppers or jalapeños.

Nutrition Notes

• Great northern beans are a fiber powerhouse with 12 grams per cup. They also have an impressive amount of calcium and are high in potassium. Potassium comes in handy to help lower blood pressure, which can come from too much sodium. Canned beans are high in sodium, but rinsing them off removes additional salt—great for overall health.
• Chicken thighs have slightly more fat than chicken breast, but since they are a mix of white meat and dark meat, that gives them a juicier texture. Because of the dark meat, they are slightly higher in iron, which is great for combatting fatigue.
• We chose reduced-fat cream cheese in this recipe because it is a slightly softer type of cream cheese, which means it will melt faster. It is also lower in saturated fat and total calories than regular cream cheese—a great choice if you still want the tang and creaminess of cream cheese but with a slightly healthier profile.