Author: sarahwaz

Creamy Queso Soup with Shrimp

recipe

Chef Amy Yanush

Recipe

Creamy Queso Soup (with shrimp)Saute 1/2 C chopped onions, 1/2 C chopped celery, 6 cloves chopped garlic in 1 stick real butter. Salt, pepper, dill and cilantro, to taste.Dissolve mix in 1 cup warm water, stir in 1 cup of milk. Add to melted butter mixture. Stir. Add 5 cups of water. Bring to boil stirring often. Reduce heat to medium to thicken. Add 16 oz sour cream. Simmer and stir often. Add red pepper flakes, to taste. Stir in 1/2 can of rotel tomatoes and green chilies. Save rest for individual topping. Stir in 1 cup of any white cheese (I used sharp white cheddar, I forgot to buy queso or any mexican cheese). Save 1 cup of cheese for topping. Heat back to warm and well blended. You could add in here, grilled chicken or shrimp. I sauteed 12oz shrimp, seasoned with lemon juice, salt, pepper and old bay seasoning, and let people add their own.Also sliced a loaf of french bread, brushed with melted butter and toasted in oven.

Keto Chicken Taco Soup

recipe

Chef Julie Martin

Recipe

Link to recipe

I first saute my chopped green peppers and onions in the Instant Pot on the saute function. I love that I can saute in the same pot that I cook this soup under pressure to minimize the number of dirty dishes.

When you saute the green peppers and onions, it will cause brown bits to stick to the bottom of the inner pot of the Instant Pot. You have to deglaze the pan. Otherwise, it might not come to pressure. To do this, while the saute function is still turned on, pour about 1/4 cup chicken broth in the pan and scrape the bits off the bottom with a wooden spoon. They are incredibly flavorful and will add more taste to this delicious Easy Chicken Taco Soup keto recipe.

Add the chicken and all other ingredients except the cream cheese into your pot to make the Instant Pot Keto Chicken Taco Soup. With little ones underfoot, it makes me one happy mama when I can dump all the ingredients into the pot at one time. Prep time is so easy and clean up is a breeze when using the Instant Pot. When you pressure cook this low carb chicken taco soup, it will taste like it has been simmering for hours.

While I have a recipe for Homemade Keto Taco Seasoning that you could use in this recipe, I prefer to add the individual spices listed on the recipe card. I use the store-bought dry ranch seasoning packet but, if you prefer, you can find a homemade recipe on Pinterest.

Once this keto-friendly soup is done, you can remove the chicken and shred it into chunks. I like to shred mine in different sizes from larger pieces of chicken to smaller shreds for added texture. I don’t add the cream cheese until after the soup has pressure cooked as dairy products often break down in the Instant Pot. The cream cheese makes this Creamy Chicken Taco Soup rich and full of incredible flavor.

Pro Tip: While I usually shred my chicken with two forks, many use a mixer for convenience. If you are in a time pinch, the mixer might be the quickest choice, but keep in mind it will shred all the chicken finely so you will miss out on the texture of having some bigger chicken chunks.

VARIATIONS TO THE RECIPE FOR CHICKEN TACO SOUP:

  • Use chicken tenderloins instead of chicken breasts – I tested the recipe with tenderloins because my grocery store was out of chicken breasts. I cooked them on high pressure for eight minutes, then did a quick release after five minutes.
  • Double the cream cheese to make a Creamy Chicken Tortilla Soup.
  • Swap out the chicken for 1.5 pounds of ground beef or turkey for the chicken. If using ground beef, I would also use beef broth instead of chicken broth.
  • If you don’t follow a ketogenic diet, you can add black beans or pinto beans and/or corn.
  • You can also cook this in the Crock-pot, but make sure to add the cream cheese at the end. I have included cooking instructions for crock-pot chicken taco soup in the recipe card.

I made my Taco Chaffle recipe and cut the chaffles in strips and garnished the soup with them along with a mixture of white and mild cheddar cheese.

TOPPINGS FOR EASY KETO TACO SOUP RECIPE:

  • Shredded Cheese (I used mild cheddar and white cheddar)
  • Jalapenos
  • Sour Cream
  • Sliced Taco Chaffles
  • Cilantro
  • Avacado
  • Make a taco chaffle and cut in small strips to enjoy with the Chicken Taco Soup instead of tortillas

Concocted Soup

recipe

Chef Kim Radek

Recipe

She browns sage sausage and then adds it to beef broth and butternut squash soup. Then she sweats onions in the sausage pan, adding it after to her broth pot. Then she stirs in a can of fire-roasted diced tomatoes and diced potatoes. Finally, she adds a 1/2 head of cabbage. She pours that into bowls over already-cooked noodles. And adds pepper to taste.

Icon Collaboration

Method – Connecting The Dots

Quality Assurance

One of the projects I initiated was called Connect The Dots. It was an effort to look at performance metrics between Quality Assurance, coaching, training, voice of client, and recruiting to look at attributions, causal links, and individual characteristics.

Connect the Dots

What we did so far

  • We articulated the new hire training course plan to the quality assurance form
  • We matched up surveys voice of client calls to the quality assurance form
  • We gathered the quantitative and qualitative scores and observations from 2 sample new hire training classes and added that into our model
  • We gathered 20 sample recordings from 16 people from the new hire classes and added them into our model
  • We gathered the voice of client surveys for each of those individuals and added them to our model

What was left to do

We have not yet analyzed…

  • if performance in class per topic is tied to performance with actual clients
  • If changes in training method has a change in performance with clients
  • If changes in mentoring have a change in performance with clients
  • If changes in coaching have a change in performance with clients
  • If changes in resources such as tools or knowledge management systems has a change in performances with clients
  • If updates in systems has a change in performance with clients
  • If there are cohort group differences in what time of year we hire or train
  • If there are individual characteristics of people who are lower or higher performers
  • If there are predictive items that we could measure for high performers that we could tie to recruiting
Icon checklist

Method – Scoring calls

Quality Assurance

What is the rubric used?

In the book The Effortless Experience there is a strong case made that it is less about “delighting” or “dazzling” a customer and more on making the experience low effort which is described in the following statement:
Loyalty is driven by how well a company delivers on its basic promises and solves day-to-day problems, not on how spectacular its service experience might be. Most customers don’t want to be “wowed”; they want an effortless experience. And they are far more likely to punish you for bad service than to reward you for good service.

So, to measure ways of making the experience effortless the approach that my team had was to weigh transactional and interactional items equally. It was not just what was done but how it was done.

Quality vs Quantity?

Are 5 calls a month enough? Ten calls? 20 calls? Should they be a random sampling or does there need to be a quota per activity? Do newly hired people need more calls than veterans? Should there be a different scale used?

These are definitely questions I have wrestled with. My heuristic is based on having enough of a sample to give actionable feedback on. If the scores are tied to a reward system, then it has to be fair across all people in that reward system. For example, if performance is tied to bonus pay then it is not fair to assess 15 calls for Person A and only 5 calls for Person B.

Generally, the base number I have used is 10 and then added calls across cohort group based on new skills or targeted needs.

Pass/Fail vs A-F vs 0-100?

In my experience, people rarely look at feedback given on the calls marked as “pass” and instead concentrate on the ones marked as fail. Someone can be marked as a pass but maybe they barely passed. It might be better to assign a letter grade. Once again, this could be tricky if tied to an extrinsic reward system. A numeric score might work better if all elements are consistent across participants and per call. Whichever method is selected, it is the next step on how it is used for coaching that is key.

Automation on sentiment or trained professionals?

I have only worked with systems that involved people evaluating recordings directly. I have seen demos that showed systems that listed to EVERY call and analyze for sentiment to allow a holistic view of interactional style. I have worked with web analytics tools to know that there are ways to create “correct paths” to match transactional items. This pathing is very system dependent and can be a huge challenge if people are interacting with a multitude of systems. For a time I think there would still be a need for individuals to analyze recordings to enhance or validate automated findings.

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Tool – Nice Engage

Quality Assurance

Nice has a wide variety of client experience tools. My experience as the Supervisor of the Quality Assurance team was with a tool called Nice Engage.

You know that recorded message that plays before you call customer support that says something like “this call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes” – well, that is what we would do. This tool allowed us to record the calls so we could hear both the caller and the customer service rep. It also would record the rep’s computer screens minus any secure items that would be masked.

Our call reviewers could then interact with Nice Engage in order to play the calls, add scores, add comments, and send the calls for review.

Learn more about NICE Engage

icon User Experience

Tool – Experience Journey Map

UX

Here is an example of an experience journey that I have tried to emulate for my projects. I like so many things about it. It has an easy to use layout with consistent keys and symbolism. It has guiding principles. It has the thinking-doing-feeling perspectives to keep it a user-centered process. It also has opportunities listed per phase. Actions can be taken on these opportunities in multiple ways. It is also easy for a team to set up minimally viable improvements along the way without having specific items prescribed. (Note: Items are blurred to protect any possible proprietary info.)