My 3 Key Ingredients for the Best Rotisserie Chicken Soup

I have always liked chicken soup. I am one of those people who believes in the medicinal properties of it all—from the red and white Campbell's cans of my youth to the sophisticated mix of chicken broth, yolks, lemon and rice in avgolemono that I learned to enjoy in Greece. And there's just something warm and comforting about a bowl of canjica, the versatile, homestyle soup that I found out about in Brazil. It's thick like avgolemono or a rice pudding, and made with white corn or hominy. The dish's origins stretch back to communities of enslaved Africans and Afro Brazilians. I usually make my own version after I've roasted a chicken for dinner and picked at the carcass for as long as I can. But several years back I discovered that I can jump-start my chicken soup preparation by beginning with a simple rotisserie chicken. The spit-cooked bird that I can pick up in my local supermarket gives me a similar depth of flavor that I'd get from the taste of roasted meat, with a little less work.

However I prepare it, I like to ring in the changes with my chicken soup. Sometimes, I'll add a dash or two of soy sauce and cut up some radishes, snow peas and scallions to drop in, and perhaps plop in some precooked noodles. At other times I might add a squeeze or two of lime juice. But I discovered my all-time favorite way with chicken soup years ago while sharing a lunch with some friends in New Orleans at the late and much-lamented culinary antique shop, Lucullus. There one day, a member of the staff who was from Mexico added some cut-up avocado to the chicken soup that was the lunch's centerpiece. She explained that the soup was usually eaten that way in her home (as with posole or tortilla soup, too). It was a revelation. It was magical: the creaminess of the avocado somehow went perfectly with the tang of the chicken soup that was created by a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. I was hooked. But, being me, I had to keep toying with additions. I found that a few snippets of cilantro, which I adore but know is not everyone's favorite herb, enhanced that magical feeling I had when I first tasted the chicken soup with avocado at Lucullus. And I've never been one to say no to a spoonful or two of minced scallion.

Now, every time that I savor my fast, cheating chicken soup with bits of avocado and cilantro, I think of the Crescent City at the bend in the Mississippi River and a surprising revelation from Latin America that turned up in the bowl one afternoon many years ago, ringing in changes.

This essay is part of the series Diaspora Dining: Foods of the African Diaspora. In this monthly column with essays and recipes by Jessica B. Harris, Ph.D., we explore the rich culinary traditions of the African diaspora. Harris is a culinary historian and the author of 13 books related to the African diaspora, including Vintage Postcards from the African World (University Press of Mississippi), My Soul Looks Back (Scribner) and High on the Hog (Bloomsbury USA), on which the Netflix documentary series High on the Hog is based. She is the 2020 recipient of the James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award. For more from Harris on EatingWell, see Migration Meals: How African American Food Transformed the Taste of America and her Juneteenth Celebration Menu. Follow her on Instagram @drjessicabharris.