January Recipe 1: Chicken Tortilla Soup

In 2013 I am challenging myself to try to cook 2 new recipes each month.  This is going to be really good for me.

My first recipe for January:  Chicken Tortilla Soup.

I found the recipe in a Slow Cooker magazine from January 2010.  This is the only Slow Cooker magazine I have ever received (a Christmas gift that came with the crock pot) so I held onto it.  (Sigh of relief from my readers.  No I don't have 2 years worth of slow cooker magazines piled up somewhere!)

Chicken Tortilla Soup

Soup:

• 1 lb boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-size pieces
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 2 tablespoons ground cumin
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 2 teaspoons dried minced garlic
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper (cayenne)
• 1 can (28 oz) diced tomatoes, undrained
• 1 carton chicken broth (4 cups)
•  4 corn tortillas cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1/2 cup fresh cilantro

Garnishes if desired:

• Shredded Cheddar cheese
• Sour cream 

1. Spray slow cooker with cooking spray.  In cooker, mix all soup ingredients except cilantro.
2. Cover; cook on low heat setting 6 to 8 hours.
3. Stir in cilantro.  Increase heat setting to High.  Cover; cook 15 minutes longer.
4. Garnish each serving with cheese and sour cream.

This was a success and very easy to prepare.  The most challenging part for me was handling the raw meat.  I always find this so gross...but I survived cutting the chicken into bite size pieces.  It wasn't so bad I guess.

You'll notice there are quite a few spices required in this recipe.  We didn't own any of them prior to today.  We did skip out on spending $5 on a huge thing of minced garlic and instead we minced some fresh garlic that we already had on hand.  (Somebody tell me, why isn't there a store where you can just buy spices in small quantities?!)

I also cooked this on the High heat setting for almost half of the time since I got a late start in preparing dinner.  (We ate dinner at 8:00 tonight...oops!)

Hubs agrees that it is a repeatable meal.  It was delish.  We ate it with cornbread.  Hubs made lemon sugar cookies for dessert that were also a hit.