Love homemade chicken soup, but think you don’t have the time to make it? Love guacamole, but tired of the same guac flavors? Marcus Samuelsson *brings it* with this Top Chef Masters rendition of Jonathan Waxman’s roast chicken recipe (soup recipe here). That was a long and confusing sentence. Let me explain. The chefs were tasked with cooking a recipe from their fellow contestant’s cookbook. Midway through the challenge, the far-too-skinny, needs-to-eat-a-sandwich hostess says they need to turn this recipe into soup. Marcus Samuelsson was making a classic roast chicken recipe by Jonathan Waxman and from it he created a seriously good and easy soup.

Before I even made it to K’s place, he’d cut some tortillas into small strips, fried them up in some oil and salted them. So already, yum.

We used one big organic chicken breast and roasted it in the oven, before putting it into a simmering pot of pre-made chicken stock, but you could easily use rotisserie chicken and save even more time. In the stock we also simmered shallots, tomatoes, green onions, lime juice, cilantro and cumin. It was pretty good pre-cumin, but the addition of the spice made us both say, “WOW.” The recipe also calls for scrambled eggs in the soup, but we skipped those because K is not a fan of the eggs.

So you’ve got good soup. BUT, what really put this over the top was the addition of the guac. I have never heard of guacamole with goat cheese before so I was skeptical. But we sautéed some onion and garlic then mashed them together with avocado and goat cheese. We added in some lime juice, jalapeno, cilantro and red bell pepper. Then we took a tortilla chip (pre-made, not the crispy strips K fried up) and tasted. Again, WOW. Why didn’t someone think to put goat cheese in guac before?!? Every guac should have goat cheese in it! It has all the guacamole flavors, but there was an additional richness, a creaminess and tartness that only goat cheese can bring.

Hot, fresh chicken soup. One spoonful of goat cheese guacamole in the soup stirred in so everything gets wicked creamy and savory. Top with a pile of crispy tortilla strips and you’ve got a dinner devoid of much noise except for “Mmmmmm” and soup slurping. Make sure to get extra chips because the recipe makes a lot of guacamole. Not nearly enough though because you’ll definitely miss it when you’ve licked the bottom of the bowl clean.

Now go…get your soup on!!!

Chicken Soup with Avocado Goat Cheese Guacamole and Crispy Tortilla Strips