From the Books Thursday: Taco Soup

I have really gotten into soups lately as you can see here and I'm making a tomato soup (similar to this one) this weekend. They don't take a ton of time to prepare and they can feed you for a few days (or a week). Plus, you can freeze the leftovers and then just pull out a container when you need it and it thaws nicely.


I found a recipe for Chicken Taco Soup in my mom's Taste of Home Favorite Brands 2005 cookbook (yes we have a lot of these books) and it sounded like it would warm me through and through now that the temps are dropping. I had almost all the ingredients at home, so it was a no-brainer to proceed in making this. I decided to add a few things of my own to this to really amp up the flavor and make the soup go a little farther.

Thinly sliced chicken?

I started by chopping the chicken into thin strips as the book suggested and added it with some EVOO, cumin and cilantro to the pan and started cooking it through. I had a little over what the recipe called for of chicken, but I think you could use 1.5 lbs. and have a lot of lean protein in the soup. I realized right away that I either didn't cut the strips thin enough or the recipe wanted us to have huge pieces of meat in the soup. Once it was cooked through, I put the chicken on the cutting board and chopped it into smaller, more manageable bites.

Cumin & Cilantro chicken

This recipe was then as easy as adding the rest of the ingredients (corn, salsa, beans, taco seasoning), bringing to a light boil and simmering for a bit. Supposedly, after the simmer it was to be ready to eat, but when I tasted it, the flavors were very bland and the soup was extremely watery.

I added some cumin and dried cilantro to amp up the flavor, and my mom had some tiny noodles in stock that I added to help make the soup a bit thicker. This really helped as I am one that really likes a stewp!

Itty, bitty noodles to thicken soup

Then I went for my special ingredient, green Tabasco sauce. I added some shakes and let it sit on the stove on low for about an hour and when I came back to taste, it was delicious. It warmed me up for sure but didn't overpower my buds so I could taste all the flavors.

Special ingredient to turn up the heat!

Chicken Taco Soup

I brought some with me to work the next day. The book suggested putting tortilla strips and cheese over the top to serve, and I decided Frito's would work for me. I didn't have shredded cheese available to me, but luckily Walgreen's pulled through with a $.39 cheddar cheese stick that I chopped up and added to the cheese. That extra 20 hours of the soup resting really infused the flavors even more. And the crunch of the Frito's was a perfect touch. I could probably do without the cheese as it wasn't a creamy soup and wasn't chili so the cheese was just sort of there. But definitely add some chips for crunch!

Chicken Taco soup w/ Fritos & sliced cheese

So although I didn't alter the recipe much, I think that if I wouldn't have added my additional ingredients, it would have been pretty bland.

So now that the weather is cooler, are you planning to make any soups? I would love to hear your favorite kinds!