Recipe
Mexican Chicken Soup Ole
Prep Time: 25 min
Cook Time: 1 hr
Serves: 18
Make this soup once and you’ll be hooked. While it may seem like a lot of ingredients – it’s super simple to put together. To begin, you throw most of the ingredients, including whole pieces of chicken in a pot and let them simmer while you prep the final touches. Don’t worry if you have never heard of tomatillos. While they’re a lovely authentic touch in a Mexican soup, we’ve included tomatoes and zesty lime juice producing an equally addictive soup guaranteed to be one of the healthiest you’ve ever made. You can eat your fill without a pang of guilt. This is also a calorie counters dream concoction. And you’ll go a long way to find a better use for those budget priced chicken legs with thighs attached. Also – earmark this soup for prime time tomato season.
Contributed By: Developed for CFC by Monda Rosenberg
Ingredients
2 lbs (1 kg)
chicken pieces such as 5 chicken legs with thighs attached
8 cups (2 L)
chicken broth
2
large white or red onions, coarsely chopped
8
cloves garlic, finely chopped
1
large jalapeno, seeded and finely chopped
127 ml
can chopped green chilies
1 tbsp (15 mL)
ground cumin
2 tsp (10 mL)
chili powder
1 tsp (5 mL)
each of dried leaf oregano and ground coriander
1/2 tsp (2.5 mL)
ground cinnamon
4 cups (1 L)
chopped ripe tomatoes including seeds and juice
1
large green pepper
2
stalks celery
1
lime
1 cup (250 mL)
coarsely chopped cilantro
sour cream and dried chili flakes (optional)
Instructions
1
Pull skin from chicken and remove fat. Pour broth into a large saucepan that will hold about 18 cups (4.5 L) and set over medium heat. Prepare onion, garlic and jalapeno and add to broth as soon as they are chopped. Stir in entire contents of the can of green chilies and seasonings. Then submerge chicken in soup, bone-side up. Cover and simmer 30 minutes.
2
Meanwhile prepare tomatoes. Coarsely chop green pepper and slice celery. When chicken has cooked 30 minutes, remove to a bowl. Stir tomatoes, green pepper, celery and juice of half a lime into the soup. Cover and simmer 20 minutes.
3
Meanwhile, strip chicken from the bone and either pull apart, shred or cut into little pieces. Prepare cilantro. After the soup’s final 20 minutes of cooking, stir in chicken and add cilantro. Taste and add salt and more lime juice if needed. Serve soup and pass sour cream for spooning over top and slices of lime for squeezing in more juice if you like.
