Sweet Potato Mexican Chicken Chowder

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This is one of my favorite soups—creamy, hearty, a little spicy and… good for you? Let’s be real- I need this soup in my life this week when I’ve been hitting the quarantine snacks a little too hard.

With the Sloth Shortcuts, this soup comes together in no time. It also has no cream, and is completely dairy free and/or gluten free if you want it to be! If you like, it could also be vegan/vegetarian—see recipe notes below. Instead of relying on heavy cream, milk, or cheese to make the soup creamy and cheesy, this soup uses…

Pureed Veggies.

AKA sneak some vegetables in and your kids, husband, yourself, whoever, won’t know. Mr. Sloth really doesn’t like sweet potatoes. I actually don’t either, usually. They’re just too… sweet. I usually only like them if they’re mashed with sour cream and 8 cups of cheese (a recipe for another day!) I do love this soup though! I especially like knowing I’m getting a good serving of veggies.

The starter to any good soup- carrots, celery, onion. Sauté them up in an oil or butter of your choice in a big beautiful pot (I like this one). I usually use avocado oil because it’s good for high heat and has a mild flavor. This is a good clear-out-the-veggie-drawer recipe. These veggies (along with the sweet potatoes) are what will be pureed into the creamy, velvety texture of this soup. A note on how you chop these veggies… they’re going to get blended… so we don’t have to be precious about how we chop them! They don’t have to be pretty. They don’t have to be uniform. Just give everything a quick, rough, chop- the onion, carrots, celery, and sweet potato- and throw them in the pot.

Let everything sauté in the oil on medium-high heat for a few minutes. This is important because it develops some nice flavor. Here’s some science on why you should do this- hundreds of new flavor compounds!

Next, the sweet potatoes, carrots, celery and onion are simmered in broth and a can of diced tomatoes or salsa, and the spices (chili powder, garlic powder, cumin, salt, and pepper). I usually use chicken broth, but if you want to make this vegetarian/vegan, use vegetable broth.

And, when I say broth, I mean this. This stuff is GOLD. Instead of broth, add a scoop of this with water to your soup. The flavor is amazing, and it’s so much easier to keep this in the fridge than keeping cartons of broth and stock.

If you’re not using cooked chicken, you can add the raw chicken to the broth and veggies now. If you’re using cooked chicken, wait until later to add it. Let everything simmer together, letting the chicken cook (if needed).

The Magic Step

Once everything is nice and cozy, and the chicken is fully cooked (if you’re doing that), REMOVE THE CHICKEN FROM THE POT to shred it. Very important, unless you want pureed chicken. No. You do not want that.

With the chicken removed (if necessary), take the pot off the stove and get out your trusty immersion blender. I love mine, and I use it many times every week! A lot of recipes will have you blend soup in a high power blender but… that makes more dishes to clean. This little immersion blender blends things right in the pot, and it’s so much easier to clean. Blend, blend, blend, until everything looks creamy and delicious and smooth. This usually takes several minutes.

Now you get to play. Add in whatever goodies you want to your soup / whatever you have in the pantry that will work. This is good “quarantine soup” because it’s so flexible. Don’t stress yourself out. I’ve made many variations of this, and they’ve all been good! I always try to make sure I have something from each category:

Protein: add the chicken into the soup, or if you want to make it vegetarian or vegan, add a vegetable form of protein
Something Green: fresh spinach or kale (by “fresh” I mean this is a great way to use up any greens on their last leg), or frozen spinach or kale.
Other Veggies or Beans (optional): corn and/or black beans are great

Last step. VERY IMPORTANT. This soup needs something acidic- a little bit of lime juice. If I have fresh limes, I’ll for sure use them. Buuut what I usually use is just use a squeeze of refrigerated lime juice— it works fine! Don’t hate on it.

Topping ideas for your yummy soup:

Avocado, shredded cheese, sour cream, and crushed tortilla chips
Avocado and tortilla chips or plantain chips (to be dairy free and gluten free)

Sloth Shortcuts

Sloth Shortcut #1: Use chicken base in your soup instead of stock or broth

Sloth Shortcut #2: Use rotisserie chicken meat, or any cooked chicken meat

Sloth Shortcut #3: Use what you have – don’t stress yourself out. This is a forgiving soup. Don’t have canned tomatoes? Don’t use them! No chicken? This is now sweet potato black bean soup! Yum!

Sloth Shortcut #4: Use bottled lime juice if you don’t have fresh limes

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