Using AI to Make Chicken Tortilla Soup from the Taco Project

I’ve written before about how AI is a 90% expert: smarter than 90% of the people on most topics. And that was a year ago, so I’m sure the number has inched up.

The question is not how good the AI is, the question is: what do you use it for?

There are millions of industrial-use applications: at 60 Decibels, we’ve been cooking up artifacts in Claude like they’re going out of style; our engineering team is in overdrive; and timelines for our Impact Ecosystem Map and for our Signal product keep getting faster.

But if you’re not already on the AI train, all of that might feel a few too many steps ahead.

So let’s talk about cooking instead.

For a while, my wife and I have wanted to replicate the chicken tortilla soup from the Taco Project. It’s a little bit smoky, has a deep flavor and an intriguing mix of spices. The thing is, they’ve not put the recipe online, no one seems to have posted about it, and there are hundreds of chicken tortilla soup recipes out there.

This weekend, ChatGPT and I set out to solve this problem.

Here were my prompts, in order:

• I want to make chicken tortilla soup like the taco project
• Is this better or worse in an instant pot
• Ok let’s do it normal. I have homemade broth. Make me a shopping list
• Can I get them [dried guajillo peppers] at Whole Foods [aside: no, I went to El Mercato instead]
• Ok I want you to look a bit harder for the taco project version [it found customer reviews of the soup and asked me a handful of questions about those reviews, to which my responses were along the lines of ‘It’s pretty red and tomatoey. It’s not like chicken broth’]
• Quickly compare this to other top rated recipes online and explain the difference
• Ok let’s incorporate Rick Bayless’s technique—give me the instructions with that incorporated
• Are you sure I’m just adding the chicken breast whole? That seems not great how will it end up w the right texture

This set of discussions got me to a finished soup, and this is where it got interesting. The soup had potential, it looked right, and the texture was good, but it didn’t taste right at all, so we started talking again.

• It’s close. It was tasting kind of acidic and flat. I feel like I cooked it a lot. I added salt because the homemade broth has very, very little. Probably a full teaspoon, maybe more, and I added another half a lime’s juice. It’s brightening up. I will say the Taco Project one has a creaminess to it, and I’m just trying to figure out what to do because it’s generally good. It’s close, but it’s not there yet.
• [It asked some more questions, one of which I replied:] The Taco Project one is smooth and velvety, it doesn’t seem to have cream in it

It instructed me to cook 2 soft corn tortillas in a skillet with the broth, add that plus some olive oil to the blender, blend that to emulsify the oil, return to the pot and cook some more.

• That helped. It’s still a little tomato acid forward.

It suggested I add another ½ cup of homemade broth, ¼ teaspoon of sugar, and adjust the salt.

• I added more like a half a teaspoon of sugar, another half a cup of broth. I had already added an extra half a cup of broth before.

It reflected on my changes and asked how it tastes now (aside: I talk to ChatGPT, I don’t type)

• Yeah, this is closer
• The texture is right. It’s probably a little thinner, but it’s good. The flavor is just a tiny bit on the acid side, and it’s just a little flat. Doesn’t have quite as much depth. I wonder if they put more fat in it.
• Can you give me a printable version of the recipe w all the changes I made at the end including the salt and sugar

My reflection is: when I asked it for a starter recipe, what I got back was a slightly more convenient version of search. That is nice and helpful, but a 90% expert to find a good chicken tortilla soup recipe is not so interesting.

But a 90% expert around “this is how my soup (a recipe I’ve never made before) tastes, this is what I want it to taste like, help me adjust it” is not something I had access to before. It’s like having a good, experienced chef in my kitchen.

The point is: the thinner you can slice a problem, the more likely it is that your favorite AI tool will be a game changer. General expertise has been at our fingertips for decades, but advice specific to my exact situation and preferences? That’s new.

Here’s how it came out.

And here’s the recipe if you want to give it a go. I should note that I am leaning in to healthy fats so this uses olive oil which I suspect is not traditional.