This venison and wild rice soup is hearty and bursting with flavor! It is loaded with tender venison chunks, soft wild rice, nutritious bone broth, and plenty of flavorful veggies. This is a cozy meal you can easily throw together using home-harvested and homegrown ingredients. From making your own bone broth to using home-canned tomato sauce, this soup recipe is the perfect fit for the homestead lifestyle. Warm, hearty, full of flavor, and made from scratch… you can’t beat a bowl of this venison and wild rice soup served with a thick slice of homemade bread!

a bowl of venison and wild rice soup served with crackers and bread

Pioneer Recipe

I consider this venison and wild rice soup to be a pioneer recipe! You can make it completely from-scratch using home-grown, home-harvested, and home-canned ingredients. Plus, it uses simple ingredients that even the early pioneers would have had access to, or they at least would have had very similar ingredients or ingredient substitutes.

Simple Ingredients– This meal can be whipped up quickly using simple ingredients you probably already have stocked in the homestead pantry! All I have to do to be ready to make this soup is remember to pull two pounds of venison stew out of my freezer the night before I want to make the soup. Then I hunt through my pantry for home-canned tomato sauce, homemade bone broth, potatoes, and wild rice. The veggies and herbs I pull from the fridge or spice rack. No special or fancy ingredients necessary!

Allergy-Friendly– Soups are so easy to make allergy-friendly! And this venison and wild rice soup is no exception. Even though this soup contains wild rice, it is technically still grain-free since wild rice is a seed, not a grain. This venison soup is…

gluten-free
grain-free
dairy-free
nut free
egg free
sugar free
soy free

Make Ahead– Lastly, you’ll love this homestead meal because it is super easy to make! You can make venison and wild rice soup in the slow cooker or Instant Pot. Prep all the ingredients the night before or set aside a little time in the morning to put this simple soup together. Once it’s in the cooker, you have dinner ready and don’t have to think about it the rest of the day! As for what to serve with this soup, I’ll give you some of my favorite simple, wholesome soup sides in a minute!

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a bowl of venison wild rice soup made with homemade venison broth

About the Ingredients

Venison– I currently don’t raise my own beef on my small, wooded homestead…. but I do hunt! Instead of having a freezer stocked with home-raised beef, I have a freezer stocked with home-harvest venison and elk. With that said, you can easily use beef in place of the venison in this soup. After harvesting an elk or whitetail, I also process the meat all myself. My favorite cuts of meat to use in this soup are stew or roast cuts. Although I will sometimes chunk up some steak cuts to use instead. Stew and roast cuts usually come from the front-quarters of a deer. Steak cuts usually come from the hind-quarters of a deer.

Veggies– This soup can be loaded with whatever homegrown veggies you have on hand! My classic soup veggies include onion, celery, and carrots. I like to finely chop my onion and celery using a hand-press veggie chopper or a food processor. The carrots and potatoes I like to cut into slices or cubes.

Bone Broth– I make homemade bone broth from leftover roast chicken carcasses and the leftover venison bones from processing my own deer. Chicken broth, beef broth, or venison broth all work great in this soup!

Tomato Sauce– My home-canned tomato sauce literally consists of pureed tomatoes. I take any tomatoes leftover after making salsa or pasta sauce, puree them in a Vitamix blender, and can them into sauce. Basically, any kind of pureed tomato product will be delicious in this soup! You can even chop up fresh tomatoes to use in the soup.

Herbs & Spices– When making soup in the homestead kitchen, I almost never measure out my herbs and spices. A little shake of salt, a grind of black pepper, and a few pinches of whatever herbs catch my eye are what goes into my soups. For this venison soup, I like to use salt, pepper, fresh garlic, thyme, and parsley.

Wild Rice– Wild rice is the only rice I keep stocked in the homestead pantry. It is technically a seed and not a grain, which makes it easier to digest and healthier for you. I love the soft, slightly chewy texture that it gives to this venison soup. You can easily use brown rice, chickpea rice, or whatever rice you have on hand, just make sure you add the rice to the soup at the appropriate time so that it doesn’t over cook.

two bowls of venison and rice soup made with wild rice, vegetables, and potatoes

Venison Soup Recipe Tips

How to Make Venison Soup in the Instant Pot:

I like making this venison wild rice soup in the slow cooker because of how the venison cooks. Venison cooks into its most tender form when it is allowed to simmer in broth for several hours. Pressure cooking the venison soup will yield instant, delicious results, but the venison might not be as tender as when this soup is slow cooked.

However, if you want to make this soup in the Instant Pot, follow the instructions on the recipe card with these minor changes:

You can sear the meat right in the Instant Pot using the Saute setting.
All of the ingredients can be pressure cooked at the same time, including the venison chunks, vegetables, and wild rice.
Pressure cook on High pressure for 28 minutes and allow the Instant Pot to naturally vent. Once the soup has been pressure cooked, you can allow it to slow-cook until you are ready to serve it.

Another easy Instant Pot soup you can make is this grain-free creamy turkey and rice soup!

What to Serve with Venison Wild Rice Soup:

If you are a light eater, a big bowl of this hearty soup may satisfy you! It’s got the meat for protein, plenty of vegetables for nutrition, and the wild rice for few carbs. However, after a busy day on the homestead (or if you have some hearty homestead eaters in your family) you may need a little extra with your soup.

Here are my favoite sides to serve with venison wild rice soup:

How to Freeze Venison Wild Rice Soup:

This soup can easily be frozen for later! You can make a batch up just to freeze for meal prep, or you can use freezing as a way to deal with leftover soup. The soup needs to completely simmer and be cooked before you can freeze it. Once the soup is done, ladle it out into glass containers and allow it to cool completely in the fridge.

Once the soup has cooled, you can transfer it into your desired freezing containers. I like to use silicone stashers or glass canning jars. If using glass canning jars, make sure you use widemouth jars and don’t secure a lid on the jars until the soup has completely frozen.

a bowl of venison soup served with homemade gluten-free bread

This venison and wild rice soup is bursting with flavor and loaded with wholesome ingredients! From the home-harvested meat to the home-grown veggies… this is a pioneer meal you will love making and serving on the homestead!

Venison & Wild Rice Soup

Recipe by The Pioneer Chicks

Prep Time 30

Cook Time 6

Total Time 6 30

Servings 8 people

Author Alexa Lehr

Ingredients

2 lbs. venison roast/stew, cut into chunks
1 tsp. bacon fat
1 large onion, chopped
3 celery stalks, chopped
2 large carrots, chopped
6 cups homemade bone broth
2 cups tomato sauce
1 large potato, chunked
4-6 garlic cloves, crushed
1 T. herbs, fresh or dried (thyme & parsley are the best)
1/2 tsp. sea salt
ground black pepper taste
1/2 – 3/4 cup wild rice

Instructions

Place the bacon fat in a large cast iron skillet and heat over medium heat. Once the pan is hot, sear the venison chunks for 2-3 minutes until all the pieces have browned a little.
Transfer the seared venison to a large crockpot. Add all of the remaining ingredients, including the wild rice.
Turn the crockpot on high and let the soup simmer for 6-8 hours. You can really get away with a 4-5 hour cooktime, but the longer the venison simmers the more tender it will be!
Serve the soup warm with crackers and homemade bread! Transfer the leftovers into glass canning jars and allow them to cool slightly before putting them in the fridge.
Freezing: Once the leftover soup has cooled completely in the fridge you can freeze the leftovers.

Where to Find the Ingredients:

Redmond Real Salt
Wild rice
Supplies: 7-qt slow cooker, Instant Pot, hand-press veggie chopper, large cast iron skillet, stainless steel ladel

gluten-free venison and wild rice soup served with homemade bread and crackers

Enjoy the process of making a nutritious, delicious meal from-scratch in the homestead kitchen when you have this venison and wild rice soup on the menu! It is a hearty meal that is warm, cozy, and bursting with heritage flavors. Made with simple ingredients that you can easily pull from the homestead freezer, pantry, and fridge… this soup can be whipped up in minutes to have dinner ready for whenever your family sits down to enjoy some homemade nourishment!

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