4-Ingredient Avocado Chipotle Soup aka Fat Bomb Soup

Ever thought of fat bombs as a soup before? It’s not as weird as it sounds; in fact, it’s delicious. This 4-Ingredient Avocado Chipotle Soup adds plenty of good fats to your diet, and it’s easy to make as well—no complicated ingredient lists with dozens of items. All you need are a few minutes and four natural, easy-to-find ingredients.

Tips for making the 4-Ingredient Avocado Chipotle Soup

This four-ingredient soup doesn’t require any special tricks, but here are a few things to remember: First of all, after adding the avocado and the sour cream, don’t let the soup boil! Repeat after me: “I will not let the soup boil after adding the avocado and the sour cream.” Got it? Good.

Here’s why I’m being so hard-core about this. The thing is, if you boil the soup after adding the avocado and sour cream, it might separate. This isn’t to say that the soup will definitely separate, but I bet you won’t want to take the risk if your hungry family—or your guests—are waiting for the food. Moreover, it saves you from wasting precious ingredients, since there is nobody in this world who would be willing to eat separated avocado soup (please tell me if you know somebody who would!).

Another thing: If you want your soup to be smooth and velvety, I recommend pureeing it with an immersion blender (or you can use a regular blender—just be extra careful with the hot soup!) after adding the avocado and sour cream. Even after the avocado is blended until smooth, it sometimes looks a bit lumpy if you only use a spoon to mix it after adding it to the chicken stock. To guarantee a smooth result, you can puree the soup after adding the avocado and the sour cream.

As you’ll see, this soup is really easy to make. Let’s take a look:

First, take two large avocados and cut them into halves.

Remove the pits and discard them.

Scoop the flesh into a blender.

Blend the avocado until smooth.

Add some stock to help the blending process, if necessary.

Smooth!

Place the rest of the stock into a large saucepan.

Bring to a boil.

Remove from the heat.

Add the avocado puree…

…sour cream…

…and the chipotle.

Mix well with a spoon until well-combined.

Use an immersion blender or regular blender if you want your soup really velvety. Season with salt if desired.

Divide the soup into soup bowls.

Serve with lemon or lime wedges and chopped fresh herbs.

 

My fat bomb soup experiments

First of all, I never planned on making fat bomb soup—that occurred to me later, when I realized that there was so much healthy, delicious fat in this recipe. Originally, I just wanted to make soup with avocados. Actually, I was creating a personalized meal plan for one of my private nutrition-therapy clients, and I wanted to make an easy, rich soup suitable for a Sunday. I wanted to make something vegetable-based, as the breakfast for the day was a fluffy dish with eggs, and dinner was meaty cabbage rolls. Avocados are rich in vitamins and healthy fats, so I decided to do some experiments with avocado soup.

I had never, ever even thought that avocado could be a base for a great soup—at least, not for a hot soup. Hot avocado just sounded suspicious, but I’d never tried it, so I decided to see for myself.

But if I was going to make soup, I’d need some fluid in addition to the avocados. Water would be too plain and boring, so I decided to try chicken stock. I was also thinking of using unsweetened almond milk, but somehow it didn’t sound like a good addition to a savory soup.

In my opinion, avocado always needs a little added tang, as it has a pretty bland taste and a greasy mouthfeel. Good guacamole, for instance, always has enough lemon or lime juice; or, if I make a smoothie or pudding, I always add enough citrus juice to balance out the bland, fatty avocado. (Unless I make a chocolatey smoothie with avocado, that is, when the cocoa powder masks the avocado taste completely.)

So, what about the tang? Should I add some lemon or lime juice? And maybe heavy cream, to make the soup even creamier? But it might get too runny with that much fluid—chicken stock, citrus juice, and cream. Hmm. I could always whip the cream, I thought, but whipped cream in avocado soup sounds just too weird!

Then I thought about sour cream. Thick, fatty sour cream would add creaminess, thickness, and that desperately-needed tang. I also wanted to use some fresh herbs to give the soup a more elaborate flavor. If I were a friend of cilantro, I’d definitely have added that, since it’s a great match for avocado, but I can’t even bear its smell so I decided to use chopped fresh parsley instead.

Now, I didn’t have a clue as to how much of each ingredient I should use to create my soup, but after some hasty calculations, I decided to use 2 large ripe Hass avocados, 4 cups (950 ml) chicken stock, 1 cup (240 ml) full-fat sour cream (although the brand I used had only 20% fat, and I would have wanted at least 30% fat, ideally), 1/4 cup (60 ml) finely chopped fresh parsley, and some unrefined sea salt.

Also, the order in which the ingredients were to be added needed some planning. If I added the sour cream in the beginning, the soup would very likely separate. And I was pretty sure that if I let the avocado boil for long time, it would do the same.

I also wanted my soup smooth to be smooth, so I pureed the avocado in a blender with some chicken stock (this helps the blender run smoothly).

Then I heated the rest of the chicken stock in a saucepan before adding the pureed avocado and sour cream. I mixed the soup with a spoon: it was quite smooth, but I wanted to make it really velvety, so I blended it with an immersion blender until it its consistency was silky smooth.

To my (slight) disappointment, the soup was too runny. I needed to reduce the amount of chicken stock at least by 1 cup (240 ml). Plus, the parsley sprinkled on top wasn’t enough to give the soup a real flavor kick. I needed some other spice or seasoning—but which one would match well with this rich and creamy avocado soup? Last but not least: which spice would be piquant enough to cover the bland avocado taste?

It was time to do some serious experimenting! So I put a few spoonfuls of soup into small coffee cups. Then, to each cup, I added a different herb or spice.

Here’s the list of the seasonings I tried, followed by my (very personal!) rating of how I think the seasoning matched with the soup (* = inedible; ***** = incredible):

• dill weed ***
• basil ****
• thyme **
• onion powder ***
• oregano ***
• cumin ***
• curry powder ****
• cajun seasoning **
• chipotle *****
• marjoram ***
• fresh garlic ****

Note that for the sake of simplicity (and affordability!) I used dried herbs instead of fresh. But by all means make your own experiments with fresh herbs, as they lend stronger, garden-fresh flavors.

As you can see, there were no disasters, but some turned out only okay. Others were good, and some were really good. After tasting so many times that all the cups were almost empty (and my stomach full!), I chose chipotle as the winner. It gave a smoky, piquant kick to the otherwise mild soup, and left me craving more even with my full stomach!

For my next experiment, I used the amounts that you can see in the recipe box. I was satisfied with both the consistency and the taste of the soup—plus, it was filling and satisfying!

When I was calculating the macros, I noticed that there is so much fat in this soup that it can safely be called a fat-bomb soup. With all of its velvety texture, piquant taste, and healthy fats, it’s a real winner!