Day 8: Chicken Tortilla Soup – My First Real Dish at Culinary School

Chicken Tortilla Soup – My First Real Dish at Culinary School

Today felt different. It was the first day that really felt like cooking.

Not measuring. Not memorizing. Cooking.

The kind where you stop reading and start listening, to the sound of the pot, the smell in the air, and the feel of what’s happening right in front of you.

The Food Bank doesn’t hand out recipes the way you’d expect.

They give you a list of ingredients, teach you the fundamentals, and let you figure out the rest.

Don’t like too much spice? Use less jalapeño.

Like your soup thinner? Add more stock.

Prefer it smoky? Let it cook a little longer.

It’s about learning technique, but more importantly, it’s about learning how to trust yourself

Cooking by feel, not by fear.

Building Flavour from the Ground Up

We made Chicken Tortilla Soup.Simple ingredients, big lessons.

It starts with cubed chicken thighs seasoned with salt and browned in oil. That’s where the flavour begins. When the chicken hits the pan, it leaves behind those brown bits on the bottom, the fond, or the sucs if you want to sound fancy.

Those bits aren’t burnt. They’re the gold. That’s the flavour you want to build on.

Once the chicken was browned, we took it out and added diced onions, garlic, and sliced jalapeños to the same pot. The heat loosened all that flavour from the bottom, turning it into a base that smelled like comfort. That’s called deglazing, it’s what brings the dish to life before you even add liquid.

Then came the tomatoes. Fresh ones, quartered and diced. We cooked them down until they started to melt into the onions and peppers. When you see that happen, you know you’re building flavour properly.

Then we added the stock. Not water.

Water just cooks food. Stock connects it.

All that work from Day 6, simmering bones and vegetables for hours, paid off here. It added body and depth without needing cream or butter. It made the soup taste like it had been cooking all day, even though it only needed twenty minutes.

That was one of the biggest surprises of the day. I always thought good soup needed to simmer for hours, but Chef taught us that time doesn’t equal flavour. technique does.

A twenty-minute simmer is enough if you’ve built the layers right.

The Order Matters

There’s a reason we add things in a certain order.

You start with your dry ingredients, onions, garlic, peppers, herbs, because heat makes their oils bloom.

That’s where the flavour is. Add them straight into liquid, and they’ll never get the chance to shine.

Garlic always goes in after the onions soften. Garlic burns fast, and burnt garlic ruins everything.

These small details seem tiny until you taste the difference they make. That’s when you realise this course isn’t about recipes. It’s about understanding why things work.

Thinking About the Person on the Other End of the Spoon

This part hit me hard.

Chef said, “Think about the person eating it.”

It sounds simple, but it changes everything.

If you’re making soup, you can’t leave giant chunks of onion floating around or toss in tomato halves because you couldn’t be bothered to dice them. You have to think about the spoon. Think about what it feels like to eat it.

Each bite should fit comfortably on a spoon and in a mouth.

That’s not just good cooking, that’s empathy.

Because cooking isn’t really about you. It’s about them.The person sitting down with the bowl in front of them. The person who maybe hasn’t had a meal cooked with care in a long time. The person who needs warmth more than words.

It’s about giving someone a moment that feels good.

That’s what I learned today. Cooking is hospitality. It’s empathy in edible form.

When you cook with someone else in mind, everything changes — how you season, how you plate, how you move. You stop thinking about what you want to show and start thinking about what they need to feel.

That’s what separates feeding from caring.

What I Learned

Chicken Tortilla Soup taught me that cooking isn’t about perfection or following a recipe to the letter.

It's about paying attention — to the food, to the process, and to the people.

It’s about the person on the other end of the spoon.

That’s who you’re really cooking for. The person who takes that first bite. The one who tastes the effort, the care, the time you put into it — even if they never see it.

Cooking is connection. It’s a way of saying, “I thought about you.”

That’s what we’re learning here at the Food Bank. How to cook food that feeds people, not just fills them.

Cheers

Andy

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