Simply Delicious Tortilla Soup

I LOVE Tortilla Soup! You can pretty much give me ANY tortilla soup and I will DEVOUR it. After having a salad with a cup of cheesy tortilla soup at Cracker Barrel, I decided I NEEDED to make my own. Don't get me wrong, the soup and salad were FABULOUS (I happen to REALLY enjoy CB's salads and the Tortilla Soup there was ABSOLUTELY EXCEPTIONAL), but I also know I probably don't WANT to look at the laundry list of ingredients in that soup were.

(A quick internet search did not divulge the ACTUAL recipe. HOWEVER, the "Tortilla Soup like Cracker Barrel" recipes provided were not that bad ingredient list-wise at all. Perhaps the list of ingredients isn't THAT bad?)

My "pet peeve" about ingredient lists is the misunderstanding a lot of people have. Heck, I USE to have the SAME misunderstandings. It says flour, that's real food right? Never mind that the flour itself is NOT a single ingredient as there are "extras" thrown in there. And a box of cake mix is NOT a single ingredient either. Okay, I'm done. Over it. MOVING on!

(And yes, I've read the ingredients for all the cans I'm about to show you. :)

Doesn't that look SCRUMPTIOS?!?!!!! Yum. Yum. Yum.

Simply Delicious Tortilla Soup
(Made this again yesterday 08 April 13)

What you Need:
2 large chicken breasts - shredded
Southwestern Spices (I use my Mom's Southwestern Rub, which is Emeril's Rub with a twist)
Olive Oil
1/2 White Onion - diced
1 Bell Pepper - diced
4 garlic cloves - diced
1 can of Rotel (10-15 oz can)
32 oz brother (chicken or vegetable are probably best)
2 Tbsp Tomato Paste
4 cups water
2 cans black beans (30 oz total)
1/4 cup masa + water

Obviously, as apparent in the photographs, I had my chicken all ready to go. There are TWO ways you can go about getting your chicken ready for this soup.

First, you can oven fry/bake the chicken. Place your chicken breasts on a pan, drizzle with oil and spices, and cook at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes. When it's done, shred or cube the chicken.

Because I wanted shredded pieces like you find in restaurant tortilla soups, I decided to boil my chicken for 20 minutes. Normally I add half an onion to add flavor. As I only had a half onion and needed it for soup itself, I skipped the onion this time. This leaves the chicken unflavored and means I had to add my Mom's Southwestern Rub. Awwwwh Shucks.

Now on to the soup:

Start by drizzling some olive oil in the bottom of a large pot and add your onions.

I LOVE to let my onion soak up all the yummy olive oil and then cook. Give the onions and stir and cook them until translucent OR you can caramelize them (this is a VERY delicious option as well, but I was in the MOOD and HUNGRY for tortilla soup, so I just let them get translucent).

Then toss in the bell pepper.

Let your bell peppers cook for a few minutes (2-4 minutes). If you don't like crispy bell peppers, do NOT worry, there will be PLENTY of cook time coming up.

Add in your garlic.

Garlic added at the bottom.

Then your shredded chicken.

I boiled my chicken without any onion, so I knew I'd need to add some seasoning to spice up the soup.

Meet my Mom's AMAZING Southwest Rub.

I LOVE spicy food, so I added two HEAPING tablespoons of my Mom's Southwest Rub.  And by tablespoon, I mean my large soup spoon.

Yum!

Mix it all together.

Looking good!

Pour in your can of Rotel; juice and all. I used Rotel with Green Chiles. I told you, I like spice!

Then add your broth. I used vegetable broth, as I was out of chicken.

Keep on pouring it. All 32 ounces.

Add in your tomato paste. I used a big soup spoon and heaping spoonfuls at that.

Then add in the water.

And then the beans. You can see I have two different colors of black beans here. One can was "Natural" and the other "Organic". I read: DELICIOUS.

Now stir it all around to combine. You don't want a huge chuck of tomato paste in your spoon.

Looking pretty amazing and definitely well blended.

Bring your soup to a boil.

Now comes the hard part. Put on the lid, reduce your heat to low and wait. The waiting part is the hard part. Because I seriously wanted to just eat the soup at this point.

Forty-five minutes is a VERY long time to wait when you are seriously jonesing for tortilla soup.

When your timer FINALLY goes off, it still isn't time to eat. Grab some masa.

Add some water to your masa. This isn't an exact science here.

Stir your masa and water mixture around.

You want to end up with a paste. As you can see, I ended up with a rather THICK paste. I was hoping it would help thicken up my soup a little. (Not that I couldn't just add a couple pounds of cheese to accomplish that mission, but I thought I'd give it a try.)

Add your masa paste to your soup. I dunked my entire bowl into the soup pot to ensure my soup acquired every, little last bit of masa.

Let me suggest to get a relatively thin paste when you make this. My thick paste ended up giving me corn balls in my soup. And corn balls meant an extra step (and more time before getting to eat) of taking my spoon and smashing the balls so everything blended.

However, once the balls were all smashed down and blended into the soup, the soup look SCRUMPTIOUS!

Unfortunately, to let the masa meld with the tortilla soup, it needs to cook for another 15 minutes. I TOLD you waiting was the hard part.

Now, you could make use of this time, though, and grate up some cheese, cut up some avocado and whatever other toppings you want. Tortilla chips, strips, green onion, cilantro, etc.

Fifteen minutes might just fly by then!

Ready to be DEVOURED!

Try not to get too excited as the soup is still VERY hot even if it is time to FINALLY eat it.

Add your cheese.

Add your avocado.

Devour your soup. Or take another picture after stirring it around (and taking at least one bite) so you can treasure this moment .

Talk about absolutely simple and delicious. And LEFTOVERS!

This soup is definitely NOT Cracker Barrel's Cheese Chicken Tortilla Soup, but just add a bunch of cheese (you'll literally need more than a pound) and melt it in. Personally, I like just adding the cheese to the top. I didn't have any tortillas made, so I didn't add any strips; just the cheese and avocado.

And you know what? I went back for seconds. And thirds. And had leftovers for lunch the following day. (I'm pretty sure seconds were involved them too.)

Have I mentioned how much I LOVE tortilla soup?