Chicken Tortilla Soup

 The Return of Seriously with a Chicken Tortilla Soup

Seriously Soupy has been seriously absent these past few days (if you hadn't noticed). And I am not happy about it. The past week involved regular toddler madness/fun-times, new employment opportunities (yippee!), trying to figure out childcare, finish up some freelance projects, and of course life in general that made it very difficult to devote the time and attention needed to making soup. This also had me realize that as a one-person operation I still want to focus on the site, but that I would have to go back to my original intention, which was to "create a new soup every week and write about it," as opposed to providing daily content. Although I still want to do that and think soup deserves to be talked about daily, I'm just not able to do that right now. But, of course this can (and hopefully) will change very soon with the addition of more soupy contributors (like you!) who will share their favorite recipes or new ideas to the site. After all, I do want to make this site more of a soupy community, and not just me sprouting off my own ideas of bean and vegetable soups all the time! If you are interested in contributing to the site, please email me directly at seriouslysoupy@gmail.com.

Anyway, so for this week I was trying to figure out a simple, yet hearty meal-in-a-soup concept by sticking to using items I had in my home. I decided on making a chicken tortilla soup—a pretty common little soupy, but one that I had never made before. I ended up having to buy many of the ingredients, but it was worth it! This soup was both spicy and a little tangy, and of course pretty darn good. Let me know what you think!

Chicken Tortilla Soup
Ingredients:
32oz of Pacific Organic Chicken Broth
2-4 cups of water (start with two and add more, if needed)
28oz can of Plum Tomotoes
3 organic chicken breasts
1/2 of a red onion, chopped up
1 tablespoon of pre-minced garlic
1-2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 scallion, cut up
1 jalapeno pepper, cut up (can be omitted)

2 sprigs of fresh rosemary
Medley of various peppers (red, orange, and yellow)
1 can of corn or 2 ears of corn
2 cups of kidney beans (or bean of your choice)
Splash of lime juice (use your discretion)
1/2 of an avocado for garnish
couple of tortilla chips for garnish
pinch of salt
pinch of pepper
pinch of cayenne pepper

Directions:
In a soup pot or large pan, drizzle about one-two tablespoons of olive oil. Chop up the onion, scallion, garlic, and jalapeno peppers, adding them to the pot. Let cook on a low heat and cut up the chicken into small squares, add to the pot and let cook. Add the tomatoes. I used plum (what I had), but it might be easier to use a pureed can of sauce since I had to cut up the tomatoes. Or, you can be really adventurous and use whole tomatoes. Chop up the rosemary and various colorful peppers, pour in the water, chicken broth and lime juice, and let cook on a low-to-medium flame, stirring and checking on the soup periodically. While this was cooking, I decided that the soup would also have beans, so I started a second pot of water, let it boil and added the dry kidney beans. When the beans were finished (about two hours later), I added the corn to the soup and added some seasonings as I tasted (cayenne pepper, salt, and pepper). I also added about 2 more cups of water (it was pretty spicy-never deny the strength of a jalapeno!), grabbed some chips, and cut up some avocado for a garnish and it was go to good!

How have you made Chicken Tortilla Soup?

Seriously Soupy Serena