recipe

Chicken Tortilla Soup

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On January 31, 2011, we made a yummy chicken tortilla soup. We started with a CrockPot Tortilla Soup recipe from Stephanie O’Dea’s blog A Year of Slow Cooking and made a few changes.

Ingredients

Original Revised Notes
3 cups of chicken broth 6 cups of chicken broth The soup was too thick for our liking with only 3 cups of chicken broth, so we doubled it.
1 ½ cups cooked chicken Same Needs a little more chicken.
½ onion ½ onion
1 cup frozen roasted corn 1 cup frozen corn Might try doubling the corn next time.
2 green onions skipped
28 oz can of tomatoes and juice Same plus one can of Rotel Diced or crushed tomatoes might work better.
1 cup chopped up vegetables that you have on hand 2 ½ cups of diced veggies:

1 cup carrots, ½ cup celery, 1 cup peppers. (We had red and orange peppers on hand, but green and yellow would work, too.)

 Some more veggies might be nice, or maybe some black beans.
4 cloves of garlic Same
¼ t crushed red pepper flakes Same
½ t cayenne pepper Same
1 t cumin Same
salt to taste (especially if using a no-salt broth like I was) No additional salt added
optional garnish:

tortilla chips

parmesan cheese

sour cream

 We ate the soup with tortilla chips (but rice would be nice, too), and we skipped the parmesan cheese for this Mexican-inspired soup.

Directions

The original recipe also had different directions. Here are our directions:

  1. Combine all of the ingredients except the chicken.
  2. Simmer on the stovetop for 3 hours.
  3. Add the cooked chicken.
  4. Simmer for an additional 2 hours.
  5. Enjoy your delicious Chicken Tortilla Soup!

Basic Hummus Recipe +

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Basic Hummus Recipe +

Ingredients

  • 2 cups canned garbanzo beans, drained
  • 1/3 cup tahini
  • ¼ cup lemon juice
  • ½ to 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2 cloves garlic, halved

Directions

Place the garbanzo beans, tahini, lemon juice, salt and garlic in a blender or food processor. Blend until smooth. Transfer to a serving bowl and enjoy your hummus!

Variations

  • Drizzle 1 tablespoon olive oil over the hummus and sprinkle with a pinch of paprika and a teaspoon of minced fresh parsley.
  • Try spicing up the hummus by adding ¼ to ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes, ½ to 1 teaspoon ground cumin, and ½ to 1 teaspoon ground coriander.
  • Roasted red peppers or kalamata olives make yummy add-ins or garnishes.

Notes

  • We find it easier to make in the food processor.
  • Sometimes we use jarred minced garlic and/or Real Lemon juice. Not quite as good as fresh, but still yummy.
  • Add a little olive oil while blending if the hummus starts to thicken too much.
  • We eat hummus with pita chips, pita bread, crudités, warm tortillas, tortilla chips, etc. Blue corn tortilla chips go very nicely with this dip.