Savory Sundays: chicken tortilla soup

This tasty dish is one of our wintertime favorites. It's a Chicken Tortilla Soup recipe I got from AllRecipes.com. Now, if you do a search for that on the site, you'll come up with all sorts of different Chicken Tortilla Soup recipes. I've not tried any of the others, but most of them seem good. We just really loved the flavors of this one so we didn't bother trying with another one.

Here's what you'll need:

2 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
1/2 teaspoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
2 (14.5 ounce) cans chicken broth
1 cup frozen corn kernels
1 cup chopped onion
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 cup chunky salsa
corn tortilla chips
shredded Monterey Jack cheese (optional)

Now, what I like about this type of soup is that you can go easy on or add more of the ingredients. Recently I had taken out one extra chicken breast but I cooked it right along with and it came out great. I've just been making this with a lot of the ingredients really, well, except for the onions. I guess you don't really want to have the onions take over.

Anyway, start off by slicing the chicken meat into small pieces, 1/2 inch or smaller, and saute the chicken in some olive oil in a pot.

Meanwhile, here's the rest of the stuff. I had made the chicken broth earlier with my boullion.


Now, in my haste to make the soup and take care of my parental duties I neglected to take a picture of the stuff when it's in the pot, so just use your imagination! You have to toss everything in there - the onions, salsa, corn, broth, lemon juice, whatever else you want to use - once the chicken has been in there for five minutes, maybe longer. I used to be paranoid that the chicken would not be cooked all the way through so I'd cook it until it was ready to be eaten, then toss all the stuff inside, but it will continue cooking and probably comes out a bit more tender if you only leave it in the oil for about five minutes or so.

The finished product:


I like to put the tortilla chips on the bottom and then fill the bowl with soup. You can top it with cheese or sour cream or cilantro or whatever else you'd like. It really is versatile, and wintertime is the best time to have this soup.