Bobby Flay's Tortilla Soup Is The Perfect Way To Warm Up This Winter

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When the weather outside is cold, there’s nothing we love more than holing up in a cozy kitchen to make delicious, comforting recipes that will help warm us from the inside out. That means we’ve been leaving our biggest pot on the stovetop so we can whip up an impulse soup at a moment’s notice. From Ina Garten’s best soups and stews, to trending recipes we see on TikTok, there’s a lot of material to work with, but there’s one recent recipe that really caught our eye. Bobby Flay, author of Sundays With Sophie and the star of Beat Bobby Flay, just shared his recipe for tortilla soup, and the recipe sounds like something straight off the menu at his iconic southwestern restaurant Mesa Grill.

Mesa Grill might no longer be open (it was replaced with Flay’s new restaurant, an Italian seafood spot called Amalfi), but Flay’s fondness for the flavors of the southwest lives on. His recipe for tortilla soup with avocado relish has a spicy, savory broth, and is enhanced by both a homemade spice rub for the chicken that’s in the soup, and by a fresh, cool avocado relish that tops each bowl. Flay shared the recipe online, and you can also see it in his battle-tested Beat Bobby Flay cookbook.

Flay builds flavor into the recipe by coating chicken thighs with his spice rub, then cooking them on a grill pan until they’re charred, which adds a ton of flavor. They finish cooking in the oven, and then rather than shredding the chicken and adding it to the soup, it’s sliced and used to top it. That means the char-grilled, spiced chicken flavor is front and center, rather than disappearing into the broth.

The textural contrast between the charred chicken, the silky soup broth, the cool and vibrant avocado relish, and the crunchy topping of tortilla chips (along with a hearty helping of cheese and cilantro for garnish) results in one of the best cold-weather soups around. Try it once, and it just might make it into your regular rotation.

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