Tortilla Soup

Carla was recovering from feeling crummy and I wanted to make her some chicken soup. I've been collecting and reading tortilla soup recipes for a couple of years and have tried a couple.  I hadn't really been tickled by any so I thought to try tried and true Cook's Illustrated. It looked good and I knew that using my home made chicken stock would really enhance the flavor so I gave it a try.

My copy of the recipe can be found here. The original is here.

Ingredients minus chipotle chilis in adobo sauce and the chicken thighs.

The vegetables get cut up and split for two destinations before coming back together at the end. The tomatoes, 1/2 the onions, the chilis, and 1/2 the garlic will go into the food processor to be pureed.

Fresh vegetables 

The other half the onion and onion, along with the oregano and cilantro head into a pot to simmer with the chicken in home made chicken stock. 

Simmer the chicken thighs, onion, cilantro, oregano, and garlic in home made chicken stock.

We'll take out the chicken to shred and discard the rest of the solids. Meanwhile, we cook the moisture out of the pureed vegetables before adding to the broth.

Pureed vegetables cook down for about 10 minutes

Add the chicken back to the broth and vegetable mixture. Serve over oven-fried tortilla strips and garnish with avocado, cheese, and lime.

Delicious

This was simply delicious. The only drawback is that there are no chunks of tomato and onion. Regardless, it's definitely a do over.

I now make my own chicken broth; it's easy and it's difficult to overstate what an improvement it makes to any dish calling for chicken stock. This link shows the Cook's Illustrated method where you brown the chicken and vegetables before cooking. I've gone to an even simpler and faster method as done by Dad Cooks Dinner. Seriously the recipe is about 3/4 of a sheet of paper with a picture and lots of white space.