White Chicken Chili

This quick white chicken chili recipe is all about achieving a velvety texture and deep flavor with minimal ingredients. Our trick? Smash a portion of the beans against the soup pot with the back of a spoon, and eke out big flavor from ground chicken, warming spices, and canned green chiles.

You can use any variety of canned white beans for this recipe—or even a combination—but you’ll get the best texture from Great Northern beans or navy beans. Cannellini beans (a.k.a. white kidney beans) have firmer skins and won’t break down as easily into the broth. For the chicken, we prefer using ground dark meat for this recipe, which has more flavor than white meat and is easier to manage (plus, often cheaper) than a rotisserie chicken or otherwise cooked and shredded chicken parts would.

No bowl of chili is complete without a host of garnishes. But for this recipe, we say skip the shredded cheddar or Monterey Jack cheese and tortilla chips and stick with our picks: a dollop of sour cream, a smattering of corn chips (we think Fritos are the GOAT), a squeeze of lime juice, and some chopped fresh cilantro. That said, we wouldn’t deny you if you decided to ladle the chili over a slice of skillet cornbread to really just gild the lily.