Ladies and gentlemen, get your soup pots ready! 

Just in time for Passover, the 4th Annual Jewish Light Cook-off Contest is asking readers to submit their cherished — and award-worthy — chicken soup recipes. 

These recipes can include whatever you throw into the pot — matzoh balls, kreplach, noodles, veggies, pieces of chicken, whatever’s tasty — and can be kosher or non-kosher. 

In fact, you might want to think “outside the pot” and submit a vegetarian or vegan recipe, or one that is gluten free. I know, I know, vegetarian chicken soup? But I bet there is someone out there who knows how to make just that.

Together with Schnucks, this year’s recipe contest sponsor, we are asking you to submit your recipe, listing all ingredients as well as cooking instructions, to [email protected], typing “chicken soup recipe” in the subject line. 

Or you can mail it to Ellen Futterman, c/o St. Louis Jewish Light, 6 Millstone Campus Drive, Suite 3010, St. Louis, Mo. 63146. All entries must be typed (or clearly printed) and received by 5 p.m. Friday, Feb. 22. Be sure to include your name, email (if you have one), address and a phone number where you can be reached during the day.

Our panel of judges will review the recipes and select the top 7 to 10. Criteria include originality, creativity and degree of difficulty (the simpler the better). The top cooks will be notified shortly after Feb. 22 and asked to bring a batch of their soup for sampling to Schnucks’ corporate test kitchen in Maryland Heights on Sunday, March 10, where judges will review and taste each entry (soups may be reheated at the test kitchen). Bowls and utensils also will be supplied. Judges will then decide on a winner and a runner-up, with prizes awarded to each. Both winning recipes will be published in the March 13 edition of the Light (prior to Passover) and all 10 recipes will be published online at stljewishlight.com.

Feel free to email or call Editor Ellen Futterman at 314-743-3669 with questions or any samples you want to bring by.