Monday, February 20, 2006

Kitty's tortilla soup

This is actually modified from Kitty's original.

1 lb chicken breasts
32 or more oz (giant can plus a little one) chicken broth
16 oz diced tomatoes/green peppers/cilantro (RoTel Fiesta)
11 oz sweet corn
1 med to small yellow onion, chopped
At least half a head of garlic, minced
Juice of 1 lime
8-10 corn tortillas
Grated cheese to garnish

Tortilla strips: 
Fold 2 tortillas in half and snip into strips with kitchen scissors -- very quick.
Heat a quarter-inch or so of oil (less, and they burn instead of frying). Oil should be warm enough that they fry briskly -- stir 'em around a minute or two and pull them out fast with tongs. If it's not hot enough, the strips just sit there and soak up oil -- pull them out, turn heat up a little and return them to the pan. Drain them on a paper towel.

Soup: 
Toss the chicken breasts in the broth in a big pot, bring to boil and simmer 20 minutes or so till cooked.
Chop the garlic and onions.
When cooked, pull the chicken breasts out to cool.
Toss the garlic, onion, Ro-Tel, corn and lime juice into the broth.
Trim and shred the chicken and add to broth.
To serve, spoon out a portion, stir in some tortilla strips and shake a little cheese over it.

Notes:
Buddy's organic chicken breasts have so little fat you barely have to trim at all, which almost eliminates my least favorite part of this operation!
Yield: High -- 6-7 meals
Flavor: High
Cost: Low -- about $17 for 6 meals = $2.80 apiece
Difficulty: Pretty low. About 1 hour, especially if you get the Buddy's chicken; 15 min chopping, 15 min frying, 10 min shredding chicken.

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