Spicy Chicken Tortilla Soup

As promised, here’s my tortilla soup, made from the taco leftovers.  This turned out crazy spicy….I thought the heat from the chicken would be dispersed a bit with the liquid in the soup, but apparently not.  I added a few extra spicy ingredients to the soup, but mostly the heat from the chicken was the main spice.  The spice was a good thing though, since I could barely taste anything with my cold.  Plus, we always eat our tortilla soup with cheese and sour cream, so the heat pairs really nicely with the cream. 

Spicy Chicken Tortilla Soup

1. Sauté 1 large onion, two bell peppers (I used one yellow and one red), salt, cayenne pepper and two cloves of minced garlic in a bit of olive oil until soft.  Considering the heat of the soup, the cayenne was probably unnecessary here, but I was afraid of a bland soup!
2. Add some leftovers
• Remaining chicken thighs (remember I made an entire family pack…there was a ton left!), chopped
• Black beans, onions, garlic, chilies and corn
• 2-3 chopped fresh tomatoes (I thought I had a picture of these??)
3. …and some new stuff.
• 1 can Mexican style stewed tomatoes
• 1 can green chilies
• 1 large can chicken broth, low sodium (I used a little less than this whole can)



Before I added the chicken broth it looked like this.   

I love all the colors going on in there. Matt gave it a thumbs up!

4. Add chicken broth so it looks slightly soupier than you’ll want the end product.  It will thicken a bit.  We cooked it for several hours since we were both home all day.  You could probably get away with letting it simmer for an hour.  We had it covered for most of the cooking time…it will cook down more if you uncover.  You could also throw this in the Crockpot…although this batch made so much it wouldn’t have fit in ours.
5. While the soup is simmering away, make your tortillas!  You can buy chips and use those.  We had a big pile of corn tortillas in the freezer that I wanted to use up, so I baked them into crispy strips!  I’ve done fried strips in the past, and they are delicious, but baked is obviously healthier, and it doesn’t leave your kitchen smelling like grease.
6. Cut into strips and place in single layer on a baking sheet coated with cooking spray.  Spray the tortilla strips with cooking spray once they’re arranged on the sheet (and you could season them now if you wanted).
7. Bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes.  Toss with a sprinkle of of salt while warm.  We made these in four batches since we had so many tortillas.  Yum!  It was hard not to snack on these 🙂
8. Serve with toppings and tortilla strips! Yuuuummm!  This made an ENORMOUS amount of soup.  We’re having leftovers this weekend and then freezing the rest for later!

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 13th, 2009 at 2:57 pm and is filed under Leftovers, Matthew, Yum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.