Chicken Tortilla Soup Chili

This is the weeknight workhorse of the bunch — the thick, cozy middle ground between a chicken tortilla soup and a green chili, ready in under half an hour and built almost entirely from cans and cooked chicken. What makes it more than the sum of its pantry parts is the finish: it's really a delivery system for toppings, and the toppings are the fun. Crushed tortilla strips for crunch, cool avocado, a bright squeeze of lime, sour cream, cilantro — each bowl gets dressed to order. It's fast, it's forgiving, it's cheap, and it turns a rotisserie chicken and a few cans into a genuinely satisfying dinner with almost no effort.

The toppings are half the dish — set them all out and let everyone build their own.

Rotisserie chicken makes it effortless; leftover turkey works too. Fry your own tortilla strips for extra crunch, or crush tortilla chips in a pinch. A squeeze of lime at the end wakes the whole bowl up. Easily doubled for a crowd.