I have been nursing a "hormonal" headache that has been haunting me for almost a week. Even Imitrex isn't doing a complete job, so I stayed home from work on Friday. When I'm laying low, I want comfort food that isn't labor intensive. My food database in my pounding head decided that my fresh batch of roasted chicken stock would be the answer-- and then I remembered... Chicken Tortilla Soup! I haven't made this recipe for over a year, and it's a meal that's delicious, made with fresh ingredients and very comforting.
I thawed four chicken breasts in water, and lined my crockpot with one of those wonderful liners (for fast and easy cleanup). I added 1/4 cup of homemade taco seasoning (why buy mixes?) to 2 cups water and set the chicken into the crockpot for four hours...
Then I caught up on 3 episodes of the TV Show "24" and surfed the internet and hoped my head would stop pounding....
Later that afternoon, I removed the chicken and shredded it...
I returned the chicken back to the liquid in my crockpot...
Prepped my ingredients...
Added them to my Dutch Oven...
Smelled the aromatic combination of onion, garlic, chile powder, cumin and cilantro (and I absolutely love cilantro)-- and started to feel better and hungry.
I rejoiced that my $11.00 roast chicken dinner had yielded 8 quarters of beautiful chicken stock, as I poured it into my soup base
Now I'm ready to add my shredded chicken (I froze 1/3 of it for future meals)
I forgot to preheat my oven so that I could bake my corn tortillas-- and use less oil. So I took a fast route and cooked cut corn tortilla strips in some canola oil, blotted well with paper towels and sprinkled with sea salt. They were so good, that I vowed never to buy a bag of corn chips again.
Garnishing this soup with tortilla strips, sour cream and fresh avocado (in this instance, my avocado was gettinga little past ripe) and some fresh lime juice is what makes this soup the Ultimate Comfort Soup for me. It makes my Mexican DNA very happy.
All by myself (my husband is out of town until Saturday evening), I enjoyed a bowl of soup and I could feel my spirits lift.
Once my husband comes home, I'm sure that I'll be completely on the mend. I'll make a salad with a cilantro lime dressing and some homemade cornbread for him to enjoy. He loves this soup!
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