Cheesy Chicken Tortilla Soup – sticks to your ribs!  

January 6, 2008 | By john | No Comments »

My Cheesy Chicken Tortilla soup is so filling that you won’t need to serve anything but this dish for the entire meal. Be forewarned – if you eat more than one bowl than you may need to just ‘veg’ out the rest of the day! The ingredients are very basic, but by adding specific ingredients that you like you can customize the recipe to suit your own taste very easily.

During the week my main goal when cooking meals is to get something different and tasty – but get it cooked quick and fast. I just don’t have the time to cook a 2 or 3 hour meal – and even if I did I’m tired from work. On the weekends I usually don’t mind if I have to cook a dish for many hours – or even all day. A lot of times I’ll start a meal somewhere between 11am-2pm and let it cook all afternoon until dinner at 5pm-7pm.

Usually a dinner like this starts out when I head to the kitchen to make a snack earlier in the day on a Saturday or Sunday. Someone in the house wanted a tuna sandwich – so that’s how it all began. I went to the veggie drawer to make sure we had some celery (yes celery, I’ll give my special tuna recipe after this one) and I saw that we had to celery and carrots that should be used up. I also checked the potato bin and found we had a bag of potatoes and a few onions that were getting old. The first thing that came to mind was potato soup I got one suggestion for loaded baked potato soup. But I wanted something with chicken in it and I thought of chicken tortilla soup – and that’s when this recipe was born. The recipe may not be like many you are used to making – but I promise you if you follow my instructions you will be more than satisfied with the end result!

This is what you will need:

  • About 2lb chicken breast – “chicken tenders” work best
  • About 2/3 gallon of milk (fat free, 2%, D, whatever you use)
  • About 2/3 cup butter (or margarine, or what you use)
  • 1 large or 2 medium onions (white, yellow, or Vidalia)
  • 3-4 green onions
  • 1-2 stalks celery
  • 1 carrot
  • 8 medium to large sized potatoes (baking size)
  • Peppers you like (bell pepper, mild chili, jalepeno – 1-2 of the type that suits whether you like mild, medium, or hot)
  • 2/3 cup sour cream
  • 1 bag torilla chips
  • 1 tbsp minced garlic (if you like garlic)
  • 2 tbsp Cumin, 1-2 tsp chili powder (use 1 pack taco seasoning if you don’t have this)
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • About 8oz of shredded colby-jack cheese and 8oz of traditional mexican melting cheese (white) or famer’s cheese

Ok, now let’s get going. You need a large pot – the big 4-6 quart one will do. This recipe serves 6 more than healthy portions, you can double it if you have a big enough pot and more people to feed. Peel your potatoes, slice them in half and then 2/3 times lengthwise, and slice the opposite way dicing them into 1/2-1″ cubes. Let your hot water run when you are dicing, and then place them in the pot and cover with the hot water about 1″ above the potatoes. Throw a dash of salt in the water and put on high on your largest burner.

Now dice your onion, put the green onion in a small bowl for later and the regular onion in a small mixing bowl. Clean and dice the stalk of celery and place it in the same bowl. Also peel and then shred (like hashbrown size) the carrot and place in same bowl. Whichever kind of pepper you are using also clean, de-vein, seed, dice, and also add to the same bowl. Remember, add however much heat (hot peppers) you are used to using when you regularly cook Southwestern food. If you don’t like spice just go with one regular bell pepper. Then place that bowl aside for later.

You are going to watch your potatoes while you chop these veggies. Leave them on high until they boil, and just before they boil over turn them down to medium high heat. Stir them every 5 minutes or so while you prepare everything else.

Next get your chicken going. If you’ve been paying attention to the last month of recipes you’ll already know that I like to keep a few bags of frozen chicken tenders in the freezer. These are boneless, skinless chicken breasts about 1/2 the size of a normal breast with virutally no fat. This means you can just place 8-10 of them in a medium sized mixing bowl and defrost in the Microwave (on the defrost cycle) in about 4 1/2 minutes. Then I place 1/4 cup of oil in a pan, pre-heat to high for 3-4 minutes, and add the chicken directly from the microwave to the pan. If you want to use fresh chicken breast, regular sized breasts, or chicken on the bone this is all fine – just realize that once it’s cooked you’ll have to chop it up on the cutting board. The advantage to using the chicken tender is that when they’re about 3/4 cooked you can just chop them up right in the pan with a spatula quickly and easily just like cooking ground beef. Season the chicken the same way you would taco meat. Also, what I do is let the chicken cook on one side for 5-6 minutes, season and turn and then dump on the the content of the bowl of chopped veggies you set aside earlier. Then when they are 3/4 cooked and you chop them up with your spatula you are mixing in and pre-cooking the onions and peppers at the same time.

Just about the time that your chicken is done your potatoes will be getting done. You know this when they start to break down a bit and the water just starts to become more cloudy. You want the potatoes done enough that when you try to break one apart with your spoon or fork it instantly splits right in half easily. If they are just falling apart or the cubes start falling apart and loosing their corners and edges you cooked them too long. You are basically just cooking them just a very short bit before where you would if you were making mashed potatoes.

If you chicken is done when the potatoes are, just turn the chicken off until you need it. drain the potatoes in a colander in the sink, rise with water, drain, and place potatoes back into the pan. Add the butter and some salt and pepper to taste. Add the milk and the sour cream, and mix everything up real good in the pot and then turn the heat back on med-high. Add your chicken and veggie mixture and mix again. Last add your spices, the cumin and chili powder, additional salt and pepper if you like (I add fresh ground pepper), I personally usually also add 2 tsp garlic powder, 2 tsp italian seasonings, and about 2 tbsp minced garlic.

You are only going to leave this on the stove on med-high heat until it begins to boil. Then you are going to turn it down to low and simmer for at least 90 minutes, but it can go as long as 2-3 hours if you like. I think the pot we use is 4 quart, and what I usually do is get everything in that pot up until the point we just ended, and then I’ll get out the milk and put in just a little more to bring the level of the soup to within 2″ of the top of the pot. That will leave me with like an 1/8th or 1/4 of the gallon left. Also one last ingredient that can put an awesome twist on this recipe is just 1/2 cup of chopped cilantro. If you have some on hand – chop it up and add it at this point!

You’re going to cook this uncovered, the goal is for the soup to “reduce” and all the ingredients will break down and meld together making this one of the tastiest soups you will ever eat. The combination of the potatoes, and the milk, and the chicken also make it very, very filling.  You want to stir this up about every 10 minutes while cooks – I just set a timer while we watched a movie in the other room and just went back and reset it every time so I didn’t forget.

I said that this had to cook for at least 90 minutes because it takes at least that long simmering to reduce about 15% and break down the veggies and potatoes and getting the flavors all mixed together. If you ate it any sooner it just wouldn’t be the same. When you are satisfied it’s done you want to add the cheese. Just dump in the shredded co-jack and stir, and I cut the mexican melting cheese into cubes, dump in and stir. Mix up real good and get it all melted. Then fill your bowls with the soup, and what I do is add a handful of shredded co-jack on top of each bowl, then the chopped green onion from earlier (a small handful) and a dollop of sour cream in the middle of each bowl. Take your tortilla chops and place a big handful over 1/2 the bowl – and serve!

You eat Cheesy Chicken Tortilla Soup with the actual tortilla chips in the bowl (like nachos), and when you dip and eat each chip in the soup you’ll find that the combination of the salted chips and the cheesy soup is delicious! When your chips run out either use a spoon or get more chips! If you like this recipe – please let me know and comment now – especially if you have a question of a variation of this that would make it even better!

Related Posts
.
Tagged: 
Category: Cheese, Chicken, Main Dish, Meat, Potato, Recipes, Soup

RSS feed | Trackback URI

Comments »

No comments yet.

Name (required)
E-mail (required - never shown publicly)
URI
Subscribe to comments via email
Your Comment (smaller size | larger size)
You may use <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong> in your comment.