Chicken Tortilla Soup

This is Chicken Tortilla soup with no tortillas!  This soup is absolutely delicious and is definitely one of my new favorites!  This recipe is from PaleOMG.  My husband doesn't like chunky vegetables so my soup is a smooth soup whereas the original recipe is delightfully chunky.  The avocado mixed in when serving is so ridiculously creamy and amazing but then again I'm avocado obsessed these days and could just spend all day every day eating avocados.

Chicken Tortilla Soup

Chicken:

3-4 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 2.5lbs worth)
1 tablespoon cumin
2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
2 teaspoons garlic powder
salt and pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon olive oil

Soup Base:

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 yellow onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 poblano pepper, diced
1 jalapeño, finely diced
1 (4oz) can diced green chiles
1 (14oz) can fire roasted tomatoes
2 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
salt and pepper, to taste
32 oz fluid chicken stock (I used low sodium, no sugar added)
juice of 2 limes
chopped cilantro, to garnish
crushed plantain chips, to garnish
sliced avocado, to garnish

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Place chicken on a parchment lined baking sheet. Pour on some olive oil and then sprinkle with cumin, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, and salt and pepper.  Bake for 20-30 minutes (depending on the thickness of the chicken breasts). Once your chicken is done baking, use two fork to shred the chicken. While your chicken is baking, get your soup ready. Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a large pot over medium-high heat then add your minced garlic. Add onions, red bell pepper, jalapeño pepper, and poblano pepper. Mix around to help coat. Once your onions begin to become translucent, pour in your green chiles and diced fire roasted tomatoes, along with the rest of your spices. Mix together. Then add your shredded chicken and chicken stock to the pot. Simmer on low heat for 30 minutes. When your soup has simmered, add in your lime juice and a bit more salt and pepper.
Add your soup to a bowl along with avocado, cilantro, and plantain chips.  YUM!

Chicken & Kale Soup

I'm trying to get away from bread and grains so am struggling to come up with lunch ideas that are quick, easy and not just a meal replacement shake.  Sometimes I want food, not a shake.  So I've started making big batches of soup and keeping it in the fridge to reheat as needed.  This is one of my current favorites.  It's healthy and absolutely delicious!  I won't lie that I kinda wish I had a big bowl on the table with some sort of crunchy bread to eat with it but thus far I have resisted the urge to bake it.  I make homemade chicken stock with this recipe because I think it makes it that much better.  But you certainly can just skip over the entire chicken stock part and go to the soup making part and just use a store bought rotisserie chicken instead.  I'll tell you my little cheat to make my chicken stock extra super amazing and awesome.  Instead of all water with my chicken and vegetables I add in a good quality pre-made chicken stock.   

Chicken & Kale Soup

1 whole chicken, shredded
2 boxes of (good quality) chicken stock (or recipe below for homemade stock)
3 medium carrots, peeled and diced
1 large bunch of kale, chopped with middle stem removed

Add chicken stock to a large stock pot.  Shred the chicken, chop the vegetables and add it all into the stockpot.  Simmer on a medium-low for about 20-30 minutes or until carrots are nice and tender. 

Homemade Chicken Stock

1 whole chicken
2 bay leaves
6 sprigs thyme
small handful of black peppercorns
1 head garlic, split through the equator
2 tablespoons salt
3 rough chopped whole carrots
2 rough chopped stalks celery
1 rough chopped onion

4 c. (good quality or toss in a bullion cube) chicken stock

4 c. Water  (roughly)

Add everything into a stockpot and simmer on a medium heat for 2-3 hours until chicken falls off the bones and stock tastes awesome.  Make sure your liquid comes to the top of the chicken but doesn't have to cover it completely.  Strain the stock before using.  

Homemade Dashi & Miso Soup

 I decided this week to try making my own homemade miso soup.  It starts with a Dashi base.  In Japan Dashi is the base to basically everything.  It is to the Japanese what chicken stock is to Americans.  I took a picture of all the ingredients I purchased for this soup.  This recipe is from Alton Brown but since I'm shopping in a Japanese supermarket I cannot tell you 100% that the ingredients I purchased are as the recipe called for since all products were written in Japanese but I think I ended up with the right products.  Looking at a million different bags of seaweed trying to figure out which one is the right one for Dashi was exhausting.  Different types of seaweed are used for different things, the wrong one would ruin my Dashi which means no miso soup for me!  No one else in my house would even try my soup.  My husband use to like miso soup until he saw the ingredients used to make it.  He had no idea that Dashi was made with bonito flakes, which is basically a fish that is smoked for weeks over an open fire until rock hard and almost wood like then shaved into tiny little pieces.  It looks like just these weightless little flakes.  I thought this soup was amazing.  I will say I threw a few pieces of the top of my broccoli into the bowl for some color since I didn't have any scallions on hand and I thought it looked better than a bowl of brown soup!  I also didn't use any tofu just because I just wasn't in the mood for it that specific night.   

Dashi:



2 (4-inch) square pieces kombu
2 1/2 quarts water
1/2-ounce bonito flakes (also called katsubushi), about 2 cups

Put the kombu in a 4-quart saucepan, cover with the water and soak for 30 minutes. Set the saucepan over medium heat until the water reaches 150 to 160 degrees F and small bubbles appear around the sides of the pan, 9 to 10 minutes.  Remove the kombu from the pan. Increase the heat to high and bring to a boil, 5 to 6 minutes. Reduce the heat to low and add the bonito flakes.  Simmer gently, stirring frequently, for 10 minutes.  Strain the liquid through a fine mesh strainer lined with cheesecloth.


(You can store the Dashi in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Use within 1 week or freeze for up to a month.)

Miso Soup

12-ounce block firm silken tofu (*optional)
2 quarts dashi
6 tablespoons dark or red miso
2 tablespoons light or white miso
4 scallions, thinly sliced (*optional)

Wrap the block of tofu in 2 layers of paper towels and lay on a plate. Invert a second plate on top of the tofu and weigh down with a 28-ounce can. Leave for 20 minutes then cut the tofu into 1/4 to 1/2-inch cubes.  Heat the dashi in a 4-quart saucepan over medium-high heat. When the dashi reaches 100 degrees F on an instant-read thermometer, ladle 1 cup into a small bowl. Add the miso, and whisk until smooth.  Bring the remaining dashi to a bare simmer, approximately 10 minutes. Add the miso mixture and whisk to combine. Return to a slight simmer, being careful not to boil the mixture. Add the tofu and scallions\ and cook for another minute or until heated through. Remove from the heat, ladle into soup bowls and serve immediately. (You aren't really suppose to save miso soup but you can keep it in the fridge for no more than 2 days and reheat on low on the stovetop.  Also you will see that the miso and dashi may look like it is separating at times but it is fine, just give a stir.)